3.2 Education Regarding Medical Conditions and Medications

This countermeasure involves providing education about chronic medical conditions and sleep disorders that may compromise sleep and lead to drowsy driving or falling asleep at the wheel. These conditions include insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy.

The principal countermeasures to address these conditions are:

• Communications and outreach on sleep disorders to increase overall awareness of their symptoms, consequences, and treatment.
• Efforts with driver licensing medical advisory boards to increase their awareness of these conditions as they review driver fitness for licensing.
• Efforts with physicians to increase their awareness of these conditions and their potential effects on driving, to treatment for these conditions as appropriate, and to counsel their patients to take steps to reduce the risk of drowsy driving.

Effectiveness Concerns: This countermeasure has not been systematically examined. There are insufficient evaluation data available to conclude that the countermeasure is effective.

Further information about the known research, potential effectiveness, costs, use, and time to implement is available in Appendix A10, Section 3.2.

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