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Earlier this month two Federal agencies announced they were backing off on a new rule meant to better protect the public from a truck or train barreling down on us with someone asleep at the controls.
The new rule, previously announced as on the way and now abandoned, was intended to tighten how truck drivers and train operators were to be cleared of having sleep apnea before being licensed to perform their duties. Obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, is a common enough health problem. The sufferer is overly fatigued and falls asleep when he or she otherwise should be vigilant. That’s because regular sleep time is horribly disrupted by periods of blocked or absent breathing, the apnea in sleep apnea. This condition is more common with aging and especially among those with obesity, an occupational hazard for many drivers. OSA can be made worse by changing work shifts and erratic or long work hours. Long haul driving constitutes a perfect OSA storm.
The federales leading the reverse charge on sleep apnea are the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Their August 4 joint press release, “FMCSA and FRA Withdraw Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Obstructive Sleep Apnea among Commercial Motor Vehicle Drivers and Rail Workers” may not represent the soul of wit but it certainly was brief, coming in at just 90 terse words: “The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) withdraw the March 10, 2016, advance notice of proposed rulemaking concerning the prevalence of moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) among individuals occupying safety sensitive positions in highway and rail transportation, and its potential consequences for the safety of highway and rail transportation. The Agencies have determined not to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking at this time and believe that current safety programs and FRA’s rulemaking addressing fatigue risk management are the appropriate avenues to address OSA.”
The mini-press release (more of a press escape) also provided a link to a somewhat longer announcement of the non-action in the Federal Register where it is admitted that “OSA remains an ongoing concern for the Agencies and the motor carrier and railroad industries because it can cause unintended sleep episodes and resulting deficits in attention, concentration, situational awareness, and memory, thus reducing the capacity to safely respond to hazards when performing safety sensitive duties.” This not-so-reassuring Federal Register statement was co-signed Daphne Y. Jefferson, Deputy Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and Heath Hall, Acting Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. Ms. Jefferson is a career functionary at FMSCA, but Mr. Hall is a newbie to the FRA. As USA Today noted June 26 (about five weeks before the sleep apnea rule was unmade) Mr. Hall is “A Mississippi man long active in Republican politics has started working in a top job at the Federal Railroad Administration….In the mid-1990s, he worked as public affairs director for Gov. Kirk Fordice, the first Republican governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction. Hall ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. House seat in southwestern Mississippi in 1998. Since then, he has worked in several other public affairs jobs in the state.”
The reaction to this episode of rule-icide was somewhat mixed, at least judging from the reportage in Overdrive, a major news organ for truckers. That’s because the status quo to which everything by default reverts to is far from a success story. As Overdrive notes, “A sleep apnea rule would give clarity to medical examiners, carrier employers and drivers themselves about what criteria or combination of criteria would prompt a driver to be referred for an in-lab apnea test, as well as treatment protocol. Currently, medical examiners rely on any one of several different sets of screening protocols to determine apnea test referrals. The policy has caused confusion industry-wide…” Apparently one of the guidelines out there that might have had to be followed had the rule, now defunct, come to fruition was a requirement that any driver with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher would have to undergo formal OSA testing. The BMI is a standard public health height-weight metric used to define obesity. Basically, a BMI of 40 is what you get with a 6 foot tall 300 pound guy. A somewhat shorter person can weigh in in the high 200s and achieve the same BMI score.
If our vehicle is often like our second home then hazards on the road are tantamount to household hazards. The AAA Foundation tells us that the average American per year spends 17600 minutes (that is almost 300 hours) behind the wheel and that about a third of the time there is at least one other passenger in the car. That’s enough time to pass an awful lot of trucks coming from the other direction.
