Driver falls asleep, bus crashes

[echo]

Normally I don't post these things but this one was very close to my home (realtively speaking). OSA awareness is not as high in Europe as in the US, from what I can see. It took me several years and several doctors to get the diagnosis here, for me. I got laughed at several times. No one I know knows about it, and the DME situation is also very different (you rent throughh the hospital in my country). Still a ways to go.

I don't know if this driver had sleep apnea or not, but that was my first thought. So sad.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100814-eur ... ce-crespin

[borck]

Hello!

Being from Belgium, I saw that on the news this weekend...

And I had exactly the same reaction you had... maybe the driver has undiagnosed OSA...

I try to explain to people around me what OSA is, and I "suspect" many to suffer from it without knowing it... When possible, I advise them to go for a sleep study...

But when they hear about my "machine", they don't feel like going

[jabman]

That is a scary thing, I know I used to fall asleep at the wheel, I was lucky I never went in to the ditch or even worse.
I think that Sleep Apnea is well known here in America but the compactions from it are not. I knew that I had sleep apnea for at least 7 years before I was Dxed with it. My wife would nag at me to go get it checked out but I blew her off thinking that it was not a big deal. It took me worrying about high blood pressure before I went to the doctor.

[Patrick A]

Try driving a Tractor Trailer rig. Pulling up to a signal light and dozing off while waiting for the signal light to change....been there done that. No fun....glad the DMV never found out about it, while I still had my CDL (commercial drivers license). Much less my employer.

[Goofproof]

Odd's are driving and suffering from Sleep Apnea are as high as driving on drugs or drunk. I suffered with it for 30 years, probably fell asleep at the wheel a hundreds of times, never was in a accident from it, due to luck, never went into a ditch. When I went to sleep at the wheel I would always drift to the right, the edge of the road would jerk me back to life. Not a good way to drive, but back then sleep apnea wasn't known, and we all have to work.

My sleep Apnea was dianosed after a heart attack, when they found they couldn't get a airway in (20 minutes). When we could do it after that we had a sleep study, ahi 150 untreated, now ahi under 2.0. Too bad I had to kill most of my heart to find it. Jim