Current Petitions

I first became involved with this issue in 2004 because Jean Gall was a constituent of mine. I have a copy of a letter that she sent to you, in which she explains that her husband suffered from sleep apnoea—he was either a dentist or a doctor, which is a bit of a thought—and he fell asleep at the wheel of their car while she was sitting next to him.I would like the committee to investigate what research has been done into road traffic accidents involving people who suffer from sleeping disorders; I do not think that we have considered that issue. I do not want to be confessional, but I know that I have fallen asleep at the wheel of a car on the motorway for minutes, to find that that I was very close to a lorry that had previously been some distance away from me; it was the judder of my hands falling off the wheel that woke me up. I do not know whether that has happened to other members. If some of you have not got that far, I am sure that many of you have felt sleepy behind the wheel and thought, "If only I could close my eyes for a moment"—it is one of the awful thoughts that goes through your head. I hasten to add that I now take breaks as soon as I feel like that, because the experience that I have described was so scary.Long-distance lorry drivers are often at risk of sleep disorders, including sleep apnoea, because of their sedentary lifestyle and eating habits. Sometimes the speculative explanation for a lorry jack-knifing across a road is that the driver has fallen asleep at the wheel. There are instances of near misses—like the one that I have described—that are related to sleepiness.If, as a country, we consider not just the cost in lives but the financial cost of such accidents, we ought to take the issue more seriously; it is about more than telling people that they need a good night's sleep. Some people are incapable of staying awake at work. When I visited the Edinburgh Sleep Centre at the Edinburgh royal infirmary, which is an interesting place, I was shocked to be told that one of its clients was an air traffic controller; I mentioned that at a previous meeting of the committee. We are dealing with a serious issue. It is not about granny or granddad dozing off with their knitting and cocoa in front of the telly, but about people in responsible jobs such as air traffic controllers, train drivers, bus drivers and lorry drivers—even the dentist with his drill—falling asleep on the job and causing disasters. They do not know that they are suffering from sleep disorder unless they are tested.The petition has been running for a long time, but that does not mean that the committee should close it. I would like members to pursue the issue, to find out what is being done on it elsewhere—perhaps in the National Assembly for Wales or at Westminster—to establish what research exists, especially in relation to road traffic accidents, and to move matters forward, so that we have speedy testing of people who are at risk.

My father had sleep apnoea—I remember taking him to the sleep clinic at Gartnavel hospital. Christine Grahame talked about the potential for serious car accidents. As I recall, sufferers from sleep apnoea are not prohibited from driving—it is not one of the conditions that general practitioners must report to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. I may be wrong, so do not quote me on the issue, but I think that it was perfectly acceptable for my father to continue driving. If most people are given the opportunity to do that, they will. That concerns me.

The fact is that the condition is highly curable. Everybody is different, but there is a sleep ap machine that monitors the throat closing. When the throat closes, the oxygen stops running and the brain tells the person to wake up, so they are constantly waking up throughout the night for little fragments of time and then falling asleep again. They are unaware that they have stopped breathing, but their brain tells them to wake up and then they go back to sleep again. They know about it only if they have a partner who sees what is happening to them during the night. However, the condition can be treated by using the machine.To the best of my knowledge, the condition is not reportable, but that is the problem—it goes undiagnosed. If it is diagnosed, it is treatable quite cheaply, which can make family life less miserable and can make the roads safer. The money that it would cost to invest in tackling the condition would be paid back a hundredfold in the prevention of accidents, broken marriages and goodness knows what. It is not a silly condition; it is very destructive.

Could you also find out whether research has been commissioned into the impact of sleep apnoea and other sleeping disorders on road traffic accidents? It is hard to get such statistics, but you might be able to get them.