This year, for the first time, the federal government has moved the switch over to daylight savings time into early March. With this change, comes the early arrival of Spring sleep deprivation. Any change can disrupt people’s sleep patterns. When sleep patterns are disrupted, a person operating a vehicle is not able to focus and concentrate as well as a person can when fully rested. As a result, there are likely to be more car crashes and other injuries while people are getting adjusted to this time change.
Sleepy drivers are more likely to made mistakes leading to motor vehicle collisions. A sleepy driver is just like a distracted driver, not able to put all of their attention to the task at hand. Although some major injuries and fatalities may be caused by people actually falling asleep at the wheel, probably even more wrecks will be caused by people simply not being as sharp as they need to be for the dangerous task of operating a motor vehicle.
In the context of the transportation industry, more and more attention is being paid to sleep problems causing injury and death. Both the trucking industry and the railroad industry have long had some rules about the number of hours of service that a person can engage in without being given rest. Recent studies have shown that the limitations previously put in were not sufficient to avoid dangerously sleepy truckers and railroad workers. Chronic sleepiness is likely responsible for many of the mistakes which occur in the transportation industry by workers. I hope that the companies or the regulators will pay sufficient attention to this issue in the future, so as to prevent avoidable injuries and deaths in the future. Because of the size of big rigs and trains, crashes caused by sleepy transportation workers pose an even bigger threat to the public than the sleepiness of your average driver . Trucks result in 100 deaths a week in crashes in the U.S. of the 800 deaths that happen each week.
Rick Shapiro has practiced personal injury law for over 30 years in Virginia, North Carolina, and throughout the Southeastern United States. He is a Board-Certified Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy (ABA Accredited) and has litigated injury cases throughout the eastern United States, including wrongful death, trucking, faulty products, railroad, and medical negligence claims. During his three-decade career, Shapiro has won client appeals before the VA Supreme Court, VA Court of Appeals, NC Supreme Court, SC Supreme Court, WV Supreme Court, TN Supreme Court, and three times before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, underscoring Shapiro’s trial achievements. In addition, he and his law firm have won settlements/verdicts in excess of $100 million. His success in and out of the courtroom is a big reason why he was named 2019 “Lawyer of the Year” in railroad law in U.S. News & World Report's Best Lawyers publication (Norfolk, VA area), and he has been named a “Best Lawyer” and “Super Lawyer” by those peer-reviewed organizations for multiple years. Rick was also named a “Leader in the Law, Class of 2022” by Virginia Lawyers Weekly (total of 33 statewide honorees consisting of lawyers and judges across Virginia). And in September 2023, Rick was selected as a recipient of the National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) 2023 President’s Award. Although many nominations were submitted from across the country, Rick was just one of eight attorneys chosen by the prestigious National Board which certifies civil trial attorneys across the U.S. Rick was also recently named to Virginia Lawyers Weekly 2024 Virginia’s Go To Lawyers Medical Malpractice. The attorneys awarded this honor are nominated by their colleagues and chosen by a panel from the publication.
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