Legislative panel sounds wake-up call on drowsy driving

Education, penalties considered

When a drowsy driver starts resorting to turning up the car radio and cracking the window to try to stay awake, it is a sign that the motorist should not be behind the wheel, a researcher yesterday told a state committee considering whether to beef up laws to address the dangers of falling asleep on the road.

"People see them as a counter-measure to stay awake when really they are another way of causing an accident," Clare Anderson, a sleep specialist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, told a special commission on drowsy driving yesterday.

Drowsy drivers, whose response times already are slowed, she said, are more likely to be impaired by distractions in their cars.

The state began investigating drowsy driving after Major Robert Raneri, an Army reservist, was killed when the motorcycle he was riding collided with a car driven by a sleep-deprived 19-year-old in Pepperell in 2002.

The panel, chaired by Senator Richard T. Moore, an Uxbridge Democrat, is considering whether to press for legislation to increase penalties for drivers who cause accidents while sleep-deprived and to educate the public about drowsy driving.

It also is looking into whether the state ought to require broad screening of truck drivers and school bus drivers to identify people at higher risk of sleep apnea, a disorder linked to increased drowsiness.

"We don't want it to be that we are threatening their livelihood by screening them," said Lewis Howe, injury prevention coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and a member of the special committee. "It would have to not be a punitive approach, but make it about their safety."

Dr. Charles Czeisler, a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School, estimates that as many as 600 sleep-related crashes a year in Massachusetts cause serious injuries and that 90 people a year die in such crashes. One proposal the commission is considering would require police to have the option of including sleep deprivation as a contributing factor in reports on car crashes, so the state can better assess the problem's scope.

Kirsty Kerin, a specialist on the effects of long working hours on sleep deprivation, recommended screening truck drivers with a body mass index higher than 30 to 33, at which the risk for sleep apnea increases. Commission members said professional drivers diagnosed with sleep apnea could be required to undergo treatment monitoring.

Steven Lockley, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told the panel that police officers and firefighters also are at risk of drowsy driving. He suggested that 40 percent of the motor vehicle accidents involving police officers are probably related to drowsy driving, even though they rarely are reported as such.

Czeisler said that medical examiners may be under pressure to cite cardiac arrest as the likely cause of such accidents because families receive greater death benefits with that designation.

"The link between sleep deprivation and those kinds of crashes is much stronger," Czeisler said at the hearing. He said the commission may recommend classifying crashes resulting from drowsy driving as job-related in order to remove the pressure on medical examiners.

Moore said the commission is less likely to recommend ticketing drivers for driving drowsy because the technology to make that determination during a traffic stop is still being developed.

Stepped-up penalties for driving drowsy, including establishing the crime of "sleeping while driving," had been the key aim of legislation introduced in the aftermath of Raneri's death. If the technology becomes available to test for drowsiness during a traffic stop, the state could establish drowsy driving as a secondary offense.

"We may not get to the point where we can ticket someone just for being drowsy," Moore said.

John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com.