In response to this morning’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) meeting to consider a Special Investigative Report on the tragic 2016 Hoboken rail crash, U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. (NJ-09) released the following statement demanding the federal government heed the NTSB recommendation for a federal rule requiring testing and treating train operators for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA):

“The Federal Railroad Administration must heed the long pending NTSB recommendations and implement a obstructive sleep apnea testing rule,” stated Rep. Bill Pascrell, who traveled to the scene of the Hoboken accident immediately after it occurred. “NTSB is the premiere safety agency in the world. We appreciate their diligent work to get to the bottom of the deadly Hoboken crash. When they speak, we all must listen well.”

Pascrell continued, “Since 2000, sleep apnea has played a major role in as many as seven train crashes, resulting in 11 deaths and 285 injuries. But if the Trump Administration again chooses not to put safety first, the Congress must address the dangers of fatigue by passing the Booker/Pascrell bill immediately. With rail accidents becoming more and more prevalent, the USDOT cannot continue to be asleep at the switch on rules to require diagnosis and treatment a medical issue that has cost too many lives. Further, under its new leadership, NJ Transit must look at new technologies to stop a train as it comes to a bumping post, as well as redouble railroad efforts to implement Positive Train Control by the deadline this year.”

Last year, Rep. Pascrell and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker introduced legislation which would require the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to implement the proposed rule mandating sleep apnea testing and treatment for rail operators and commercial truck drivers that was abruptly reversed by the Trump Administration in August 2017. The proposal, which was cosponsored in the Senate by U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) and cosponsored in the House by Albio Sires (NJ-08), would seek to increase safety measures for both commuters and operators. Pascrell also cosigned a letter to FRA in August with Reps. Pallone, Payne, and Watson Coleman expressing disappointment in the Trump Administration’s decision to stop its sleep apnea rulemaking.

Since a rail accident on Clarkston, Michigan in 2001, NTSB has identified OSA as a major factor in seven rail accidents. There are three current recommendations that NTSB has made to FRA related to OSA and Screening. Data on these incidents can be viewed below:

This chart does not include accidents in other transportation modes, including a bus accident in Palm Springs in 2016 that killed 13 people and injured 31, in which undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea was an aggravating factor.