A proposal that would tie sleep apnea screening with body mass index emerged from a meeting Wednesday, Dec. 7, of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration safety and medical groups.
Under a guidance supported by FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee and Medical Review Board, medical examiners would refer for evaluation for obstructive sleep apnea any interstate commercial driver with a BMI measurement of 35 or above. A 6-foot-tall 258-pound driver has a BMI of 35.
The guidance comes on the heels of three separate sets of recommendations the agency has received in recent years with varying screening specifications, typically involving a BMI measurement between 30 and 35 and other criteria, including several risk factors.
A second guidance immediately would disqualify drivers meeting any of five criteria:
1. Having reported excessive daytime sleepiness.
2. Having had an accident associated with falling asleep.
3. Exhibiting apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) scores of 20 or greater until they’ve had effective treatment.
4. Having had surgery to correct apnea and awaiting post-operative evaluation.
5. Individuals who have been found to be effectively noncompliant with their treatment.
Both short-term guidances are intended as stopgaps until further new rulemaking officially codifies sleep disorders into the regulations, with a draft to emerge from a MCSAC and MRB joint subcommittee as early as February.
Medical experts at the daylong meeting made a case for the correlation between drivers with moderate to severe sleep apnea and increased crash risk.
Todd Spencer, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association executive vice president, noted the wide prevalence of risk factors for apnea among commercial drivers. “If these staggering numbers have some real live applications,” Spencer asked, “why don’t highways all over America look like war zones today?”
Charles Czeisler, director of Harvard Medical’s Division of Sleep Medicine, argued that “it is actually a war zone out there.” He cited statistics for all drivers – not just truckers – showing that 20 percent of all crashes are related to drowsy driving, with two million drivers a week in the United States nodding off and falling asleep at the wheel. With fatalities related to drowsy driving occurring once every 70 minutes on average, “that’s equivalent to two 9/11 events every year,” he said.
Czeisler was a member of the Medical Expert Panel to FMCSA on the OSA condition. None of the group’s recommendations has been acted upon by FMCSA, and Czeisler chided the agency for its lack of action on the condition after nearly 30 years of recommendations that it move forward.
Czeisler recommended BMI of 30 or greater as a better ultimate screening requirement and would require drivers with moderate to severe apnea to be disqualified from driving until being treated and proving that treatment is working.
Chicago-based Sleep Specialist Andrew Mouton presented an alternative point of view on screening requirements, emphasizing the variability in individual apnea cases. Mouton believes the current respiratory regulation 391.41(b)(5) provides a decent model for a possible sleep disorder regulation.
“The individual has to be referred to a specialist if an examiner detects a dysfunction,” Mouton said. “It doesn’t specify that you have to have a particular test. I think you could switch a few words around to get an excellent guide of how to pursue sleep disorders.”
Also of Interest »
Thanks for all the feedback here, folks. Much appreciated. Gordon, I believe drivers are heeding the call to get involved -- I've heard from many before and since this story broke who are in fact making those calls. Here's hoping it continues.
I can see that the BS never stops. The FMCSA refuses to pay attention to one of the real culprits of TTS (Tired trucker syndrome). Every driver has experienced undue delays at loading or unloading points. I'm talking of hours of waiting.
Until this issue becomes a reality, the problem will remain with the drivers. You get no compensation for your time and it eats into your driving (pay) time. Because of this, truckers have to back up their logs.(Illegally I might add)
You can't legislate and legislate to cover every possible problem. I see just as much a problem with these newbie drivers being thrown onto our highways in favor of seasoned drivers. This is a bigger issue than a "fat" trucker. Fat can be cured, inexperience takes years.
It's obvious that the lawmakers have no idea of what a trucker faces day by day. Why can we not have representatives of our industry on the legislative boards?
It will not be long at this rate that if you are over 165#, you will be barred from driving. You can't be over the age of 55. You must be 21 and have 3 years experience (try figuring that one out).
These are only scenarios but it could happen.
Here we go again.
Is there some underlying agenda to remove overweight drivers from trucking? What does body mass have to do with it. Your a safe driver or your not. Does it really matter if you sleep on your side or stomach or even if you snore or not? Is there a honest to goodness real reason to push this sleep apnea BS?
Simple fix to this so called accident related reason. Allow us to stop the clock like we did before all this nonesense started.
It used to be we could park the truck, catch a safety nap,No problem wait out the rush hour traffic and then go on our way. Easy, less truck traffic on the roads during peak hours. Lesser probablitity of an accident. Every body was happy.
Simple fix. So now if your over weight, snore or toss and turn in your sleep your wrong for trucking?
Got a family? Got debt you want to pay off? Got a home ? Like to eat regularly? Then get off your behinds and make that call.
The biggest problem we face today is drivers doing nothing to stop this BS. It is the drivers that do nothing that are propogating this nonsense.
Drivers, get off your butts and call your legisltors. Enough is enough. The job you save WILL be your own.
If they they really were interested in doing something about sleepy drivers they would revise the current log book rules. As it stands now if you take a two hour nap if counts against your 14 hours of on duty time. Sleeper berth rules need to be changed so you can split your time into two periods. A two hour and a eight hour period. My proposal would allow you to take the entire ten at one time or split it with a two hour period and a eight hour period. This would allow you to take a two hour nap without penalizing you for doing so. You would take the eight remaining hours when your 14 hours is up. The way the law is now I have to "back my log book up" to make it look like I took the ten hours of sleeper berth time at one time. There is time I need a two hour "power nap". The current rule doesn't allow for it. So I am forced to get "creative". It beats following asleep at the wheel and having an accident.
I have sleep apnea and use a CPAP machine and in my case it works and I use it nightly. But let's be real-a lot of people can't sleep with a mask and hose! CPAP machines are not the cureall. There are dental fixtures and just plain common health factors to improve the quality of sleep.
I don't drive late at nights anymore-
1- I hate it
2- I transport lots of oversized loads and can't travel at night a lot
3- I quit eating big heavy meals before bed/and eat earlier in the day
4- the FMSCA overlooks the simplest answers to sleep among drivers-12 on and 12 off with 72 off after 120 hrs of service.
5- look at the sponsors of this legislation-all stand to gain financially
6- if this is a real safety issue it should be expanded to anyone that has a license to drive. People in cars do cause most accidents.
7- no body knows my physical wellness more than my family doctor. These so called trucking clinics are there to create revenue. Yea maybe fix a cut or something for a cold-but look at the records-they sell sleep studies.
8- my machines work great-I own 2. So why would I be required to buy another study/machine/and bear the expense just to have a readable card to prosecute myself??
9- trucks today have the computers readable-and are read in accident cases so why the need to track me??
10- let's be honest. This program is backed by lobbyist and people with direct financial gains to be made. I'm all for safety but mothers against tired truckers should go home and keep they're kids from becoming juvenile offenders and druggies instead of sticking they're noses in a buisness most know nothing about. I offer my truck and a 30-60 day tide to anyone that's willing to really study the buisness. 1-2 days even a week don't come close to realizing what a real trucker experiences each day. My offer stands.
Once again I've read an artical that finds all the answers but has not asked the questions that really cause the problems.Sure being overweight may cause sleepieness but having to do more jobs than the driver is supposed to do is the real culpret. Look to the regulations that you have already put into place to find the biggest sleep problems. Make companys dispatching imposable runs because poor planing on the part of the costomer has created an emergency on the shipping route so to keep the business and be heros they call on the trucker to accomlish the imposible. Let the trucker refuse he is punished by the company with poor paying loads until he changes his atitude. Or the warehouse that requires the trucker to unload his own truck and change the pallet size to meet their needs. Truckers are not warehouse men but in a lot of cases its how they are treated. If the paper work says shipper loads receiver unloads that is how it should be.But it isn't. Go under cover and find this out for yourself. Then you'll know why drivers have sleeping problems. I could go on all day about the rules, how about instead of people that sit in offices making the rules you go to the drivers to find out what rules will work or won't work. The driving comunity is not represented by drivers, its represented by people that usally have 9 to 5 jobs. That is not the world of the trucker. Eating and sleeping, disorders are not chased away by more rules that make there jobs harder its accomplished by going to the sorce to find the cure. I've been driving for 40 years in that time no one that makes the rules ever asked me what would help to solve the sleepie driver problem but then I don't sit in an office making rules for other people to follow without experianceing the job in the real world.Wear our shoes then make the our rules.
The safer this industry gets the more reg's that want to impose on it! Look at the crash states in the last 5 years!! If they REALLY want to do something about all of this start looking at shippers and receiver's that keep trucks for hours.. And there is no way you can charge detention over and over to them.
Also if you want A safer road system.. Start making EVERY driver that holds ANY kind of license take A drug test!! If you want safer drivers.. Make the ALL safer!! Our commercial drivers have stepped up to the plate and have gotten much better in the last few years. So instead of punishing them for getting better.. Start looking into WHY some of these accident's really happen. Women putting make up on.... Men on laptops... Cell phones.. Navigation in cars and trucks..
Here we go again - Nanny state never stops.
I would suspect that most indiviudals creating these guidlines wouldn't pass BMI standard themselves (get them off the road).
Its just one more increase in cost of doing business for little benefit. Cost to company (loss of drivers, re-training new drivers, recuitment costs, medical costs) - Cost to the driver - lack of wages sine he cant drive, costs for med supplies, screening, cost to the tax payer since we of couse will need to pay higher insurance rates since this will undoubtably have to be covered under our insuracne costs.
When does it ever end. You can't legislate away all risk - anyone who drives is at risk simply by the act of driving. This is just one more example of over regulation that shuld not be tolerated!!!
Just had a friend with 15 years clean history over 2 million accident free miles be told by Crete Carrier take the test or go home. Eight other drivers did the same as he did. He did the smart thing came home.
Take the test by someone not qualified [ those primeriters have not yet been set] it goes on your driver record for life under the new law.
This might be a good time to do such things as freight is slow in Feb. 2012 but wait a month see who is crying for drivers.
Requiring drivers to do this is still under the same law that was overturned in MN. after four years in court . Wait until this class action law suite hits. Companies are headed out of bussiness.
Don
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like