Letter to Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation - Rollback of Sleep Apnea Rule

Letter

Dear Secretary Chao:

We write to express our serious concerns regarding the Department of Transportation's (DOT) decision to withdraw the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) joint rulemaking entitled "Evaluation of Safety Sensitive Personnel for Moderate-to-Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea."

As you know, obstructive sleep apnea is a serious medical condition that interrupts a person's breathing while asleep, causing repeated awakening and subsequent severe fatigue. While the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has linked obstructive sleep apnea to a number of recent truck and rail accidents killing dozens of individuals, our region, in particular, has been devastated in recent years by rail accidents with links to sleep apnea.

The December 2013 Metro-North Railroad Derailment in New York was determined to have been caused by obstructive sleep apnea's impact on the conductor and resulted in four deaths and over 60 injuries. In 2014, NTSB released its report on the derailment and faulted both Metro-North for not screening for sleep disorder and the FRA for not requiring the railroads to perform these evaluations. Currently, the NTSB is working to conclude its investigation of the September 2016 Hoboken NJ Transit crash that killed one person and injured over 100 others. The NJ Transit train engineer was found to suffer from undiagnosed sleep apnea, which is likely to have contributed to his inability to slow the train into the Hoboken station prior to the crash.

The 2016 proposed rule consisted of a modest, common-sense approach to combating fatigue on our roads and rails: require testing for obstructive sleep apnea if a problematic symptom is observed. The NTSB, whose mission is to advance transportation safety, has strongly supported this rulemaking and for over a decade, after a 2001 accident in Michigan, has recommended the FRA require all railroads to screen for and treat sleep apnea. We strongly believe that DOT should immediately reconsider the decision in order to help avoid future fatigue-related tragedies. Due to our serious concern over this decision to vacate this potentially life-saving rule, please provide our offices all data and information used to make the decision to withdraw the rule, and DOT's plan to identify and treat operators suffering from obstructive sleep apnea before more fatal tragedies take place.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this critical issue, and we look forward to begin working with you to improve safety throughout our nation's transportation systems.