According to students who were on a school bus that crashed in Vernon, Connecticut, the school bus driver appeared sleepy and may have fallen asleep right before the accident.
The school bus driver drove off the road and into a utility pole on Thursday, injuring more than a dozen students. There are conflicting stories about what caused the bus accident – the driver’s husband states that the driver swerved to avoid another vehicle.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), approximately 1,550 people die from drowsy driving each year and drowsy driving is to blame for at least 100,000 crashes. Of course, these numbers do not reflect the full extent of drowsy driving since there are no tests to determine whether someone was sleepy when he or she caused an accident.
Drowsy driving impairs reaction time, vision, judgment, short-term memory and performance. It can also lead to aggressive driving and distracted driving, since sleepiness can cause moodiness and reduce attention spans. As may have happened in the drowsy driving accident, it can also cause someone to fall asleep behind the wheel.
Drowsy driving is a form of negligent driving. Like driving drunk, when someone decides to drive tired, he or she puts others’ lives at risk. In fact, an Australian study shows that driving after being awake for 24 hours is like driving with a .10 blood alcohol concentration (BAC) – higher than the legal limit for drunk drivers!
The government has worked to reduce the amount of time truckers and bus drivers are on the road by creating hours-of-service regulations, but that does not address other vehicles and it is nearly impossible to detect how much sleep a driver had prior to a car accident.
That is one of the many reasons it is important to hold drowsy drivers accountable when their actions cause someone else’s injury or death. This can be done through a personal injury lawsuit.