Imagine that you are driving home with your husband in the middle of a sunny Texas summer day. The last thing you are worried about is other drivers falling asleep at the wheel. All of the sudden you see in your rear view mirror a huge semi-truck barreling down on you. You don't have any time to get out of the way and the truck hits you like, well, like a semi-truck. Your car spins out of control and the next thing you know you wake up after being unconscious only to find your husband dead next to you.

This is what happened to a woman of New Braunfels, Texas. "If you could have seen the scene that killed my husband ... or any of the other scenes that have been tied to sleep apnea and truck wrecks, it does look like a war zone," said the wife who lost her husband. The truck driver responsible for the fatal truck accident wasn't simply tired. He suffered from an untreated sleep disorder that puts him and others at risk on the road.

A personal injury attorney might argue that the surviving wife and her husband were the victims of a truck driver who suffered from severe sleep apnea and were due damages because of his unmonitored, untreated medical condition. Should he have been allowed to be behind the wheel with his disorder? Should his employer have known that they had a danger behind the wheel of one of their trucks and, therefore, prevented this accident caused by driver fatigue?

Sleep apnea, more common among obese people, causes pauses in breathing while sleeping that ultimately causes the person to wake up and not sleep well. Safety officials are proposing a law that would dictate any commercial truck driver that has a BMI over 35 must test to make sure they don't have sleep apnea. Obesity is a common problem among truck drivers, so this could have a major impact on the industry.

Source

The Huffington Post: "Sleep Apnea In Truck Drivers: Advisory Panels Recommend Screening For Condition In Obese Drivers," Amanda L. Chan, Dec. 21, 2011