90 Day Dot Card

Geez, even now that sounds crazy high - I will try to find that again. I think it was in "Transport Topics", some periodical that our office gets...

Here is what I am finding...

It appears it may have been the inverse of what I said - so - POSSIBLE CORRECTION:

The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has confirmed that fatigue was the most frequently cited cause of heavy truck accidents, and that SOA was also the determining factor in 31 percent of the fatal-to-the-truck-driver accidents studied.

So... still not the study I am trying to find... but 31% of fatal-to-the-trucker accidents is still way too high to have so many drivers taking an "Anti-Vaxxer" level of crazy denial about it.

Well - here is one report from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine that shows untreated sleep apnea patients are 2.5x more likely to have an accident than someone else. 250% That's what they call a "Not Insignificant Number". (I also feel like AASM might have a conflict of interests, -like Concentra!- but this looks like almost every study I found here in the last 30 min of research. The consensus of all of them was "2 to 3 times more likely to be in a serious accident" , AKA, the "2.5" number)

As long as I am straying WAAAAY off topic from the 90 day med cards... Here are some other tidbits I found on this journey:

•University of Virginia Medical Center - 15-20% of ALL Traffic Accidents are fatigue related and at least 80% of those are either from diagnosed or un-diagnosed sleep apnea victims. (the other 20% must be teenagers and my wife!)

•Harvard University 2006: "20% of all large truck crashes are due to drowsy or fatigued driving, with OSA (sleep apnea) accounting for most situations. This would account for almost 9,000 fatalities and up to 220,000 serious injuries." (don't forget, the fatality is the driver in many cases!)

•It looks like some of the best studies with the largest sample sizes over time come from Europe where they have been ongoing tracking and studying OSA in truckers since 1988. Not many large US based studies are available with more than 5 years of data. That being said, the EU nation's data seems to show that aggressively treating OSA in truckers reduces fatal accidents. Fatal accidents there continue to trend down, whereas in the US fatal accidents are starting to trend UP!:

Also: National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI): •5%-10% of the general US population has OSA •It affects Men 2x more than women. •29% of Truck Drivers have OSA (weird!) •50% of Truck Drivers are at risk for OSA! (WHAT?!) •Drivers who have untreated OSA are 2-3 times more likely to be involved in a Fatal Driving Accident •Drivers who used their CPAP machines for at 4 hours per night reduced ALL accidents by over 70% when compared to the control group.

I've come around from the "All this Sleep Apnea crap is a money grab" conspiracy theory take I originally had. Sure - that happens in a profit driven economy like we have here, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. (Looking at you again, Concentra!) Turns out...It's not all mumbo jumbo. Its a serious situation that leads to thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of grieving families and horrific injuries. Let's even reduce all of the numbers we had here by say... 10%... just to FOR SURE eliminate all of the potential BS...

You'd still be: • 2.25 times more likely to be in an accident • 4.5 - 9% of Americans have it • 26% of truck drivers have it • 45% of truck drivers are at risk for it •Drivers who used their CPAP machines for at 4 hours per night reduced ALL accidents by over 63% when compared to the control group.

So even if we assume there are shenanigans going on and account for them, the numbers are still significant and scary. Don't let someone trick you into making poor decisions for yourself just because its more fun to be a skeptic. (and a lot easier than addressing the problem)

If nothing else - do it for Princess Leia. Forbes.com reminds us that Carrie Fisher died from not treating her sleep apnea. Somewhere, a golden bikini gently weeps for its former owner...