Transportation makes life a little easier and has become a key essential to the world.

Technology and innovation created a vast number of ways to communicate and move throughout the world: bus, plane, train, cars, trucks, 18 wheelers, and subways just to name a few.

We take driving for granted, hoping other individuals are sober, alert, and safe around us but have we thought about the health and alertness of truckers, engineers, or pilots? They work long hours and get very little sleep. 18 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, 4 percent men and 2 percent women. This condition combined with operating a form of transportation could be detrimental for oneself and others around them.

Chronic sleep deprivation results in daytime sleepiness, slow reflexes, poor concentration, and an increased risk of accidents. The National Transportation Safety Board says sleepiness in general has played a role in 31 to 41 percent of crashes of commercial vehicles, resulting in 1,500 to 2,000 deaths a year. Individuals who operate commercial transportation should be tested for this dangerous illness.

Wanda Lindsey, a victim in a brutal car accident resulting in the death of her husband made a personal goal to inform and push the requirement of those tests.

Some commercial transportation agencies already test for the illness but the tests are not mandatory. Employees dodge them by not showing any signs or symptoms of the disease. Fatigue, including medical conditions affecting sleep, is one of the transportation safety board’s top targets.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates commercial driving, has for several years been considering rules on testing and treating sleep apnea but hasn’t imposed any yet.

To read more or follow Wanda Lindsey’s fight against apnea read the story in the Austin American Statesman.