ARTICLES:
The article reproduced below, gives further impetus for why CTA has been working over the past year with its partners from GroupHEALTH Global (group benefits providers) and PPD (Houston-based Precision Pulmonary Diagnostics/Protecting Professional Drivers, providing sleep apnea management services to the trucking industry) to develop a sleep apnea screening/testing/treatment program for the Canadian trucking industry.
The CTA hopes to pilot the program later this year or early next year with four or five carriers participating.
The following article may be a bellwether of what is to come.
- The Editor
New Braunfels widow fights sleep apnea in transportation
By Helen Anders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF | Updated: 5:02 a.m. Monday, Sept. 26, 2011 |
Published: 12:06 a.m. Monday, Sept. 26, 2011
John and Wanda Lindsay of New Braunfels were enjoying a sunny day's road trip so much on May 7, 2010, that when they wound up parked in a construction traffic jam on Interstate 30 in Texarkana, they weren't irritated. "It was my turn to drive," Wanda Lindsay recalls, "but John wouldn't hear of it. We were saying, 'Well, we're not in any hurry. We'll just sit here,'" Lindsay said. "That was our last conversation."
Moments later, an 18-wheeler crashed into the back of the Lindsays' stopped car at more than 70 mph, fatally injuring John Lindsay. No charges were filed against the truck driver, who told police he glanced at a wreck on the service road, and then looked back at I-30 too late to stop. But after seeing the truck driver's medical report during the course of a lawsuit, Wanda Lindsay doesn't think that's the whole story.
More than two months earlier, the Celadon Trucking Services driver had been diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. Celadon officials have said in court pleadings that at the time of the crash, they had not seen the test results. If they had, they said, the driver wouldn't have been on the road that day. Convinced that apnea played a role in the crash, Lindsay decided to turn her husband's death into a cause. "I am waging a war against sleep apnea in the trucking industry," she said.
