Getting Railroads to Regulate Sleep Disorders

In recent years, New York commuters have encountered significant railroad disasters. A passenger train crash in 2016 resulted in over 100 injuries and one fatality. Only thirteen weeks later, another train derailed because it did not brake correctly, and hundreds more passengers sustained injuries. After investigating the causes of the two accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) earlier this year concluded that both trains’ engineers suffered from fatigue due to undiagnosed severe obstructive sleep apnea. The NTSB also suggested that a mechanism to halt the train would have been helpful in both cases. Obstructive sleep apnea causes people to stop breathing periodically while they are sleeping, resulting in them waking up momentarily to restore their breath. The cycle can happen dozens of times per night, which means that those with the condition do not get a full night’s rest. Due to this condition, the fatigue of the engineer in the first of…

Read more detail on Recent Administrative Law posts –

This entry was posted in Administrative law and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply