Will Sleep Apnea stop me from Driving?

Driving? Will sleep apnea stopped me from driving? Can sleep apnea? Can I drive? This is a question we hear all the time, especially from commercial truck drivers and pilots. At this point in time a pilot goes to pilots goes through annual physicals. One of the main questions or chief questions that they're, they're asked and they get checked out for the sleep apnea. You want you you wouldn't want your pilot to fall asleep while flying. Okay? That would be quite dangerous, wouldn't it be? Okay. Mark, cut this out where I'm smiling laughing about that. Okay. Pilots cannot get this league cannot get licensed to fly unless they are treated for sleep apnea. I've had patients come in. Who would just say my name is John Doe. I want to have a sleep study done. For my own benefit. I please, I'll pay cash for it. If I need to be true, if I need to be seen by asleep, Doc, because it turns out to be positive. Yes, I will. Okay, but please get me tested, says Mr. John Dell. This is somebody that wants to make sure before he goes for his pilot's physical, that he's going to pass it that he needs to take care of sleep apnea before going through that physical commercial truck drivers.

They have to be tested as well, to maintain their commercial license. You know, when the skies driving a semi down the highway, fall asleep at the wheel. Some of these people, they'll drive too many hours without stopping. Okay, they'll drive 1213 of 1214 1516 hours or more just to get their load to the place it has to be right away in New York, to maintain after the subway accident where the where the subway driver or the subway engineer fell asleep while driving while in New York, when they had that Subway accident that went off the tracks. It was caused by the engineer having sleep apnea and falling asleep. It killed a number of people. Okay, so in New York, you have to get a commercial license from MTA. You have to be tested for sleep apnea. To get your license to work for MTA. can sleep apnea stopped me from driving? Will it stop me from driving? I'm worried. Okay. Sometimes I get driving I hear I get drowsy. Sometimes I get drowsy. While I'm driving doing carpool. Sometimes I feel like I drove to work or home from work 3045 minutes or more, and I don't remember a thing along the way. I was in Twilight Zone, perhaps dozing and not realizing it. Just somehow or other, the car made it home. Imagine if I'm doing carpool. Okay, yes. drowsy driving. drowsy.

Driving while drowsy is deadly. One of the problems with drowsy driving is that you're attracted to lights. So if you're driving at night and you're drowsy and somebody is approaching and coming towards you, like a truck, and us, you kind of become fixated on his lights and kind of Verve kind of veer over and head towards the truck. I heard a story where the truck driver survived. But what happened was, the driver coming towards them just kind of veered towards the towards the trucks lights. So the truck driver moved away turned a little bit, and the oncoming car with a driver was dozing on the verge of dozing off. Just follow them kept following the truck driver as he tried to get out of the path of the oncoming car until they had a head on collision. The truck driver survived and was able to tell the story. drowsy driving looks exactly the same as DUI, drunk driving under the influence. Very dangerous. If I see somebody come into my office and they're dozing off while I'm speaking to them. I won't let them drive home. I'll have them call a cab, call a family member. Make sure that somebody else drives them home. And if they insist on driving, we tried to take their keys away and call the car and call a cab to send them home.