Al's Morning Meeting

Stateline.org says:

New Jersey lawmakers and highway safety advocates across the country hope the state's new "drowsy driving" legislation — the first in the nation — will be a wake-up call to drivers. Drivers who hit the road when they're tired currently cause more than 100,000 accidents per year nationwide. The measure allows motorists to be charged with vehicular homicide, an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

The bill defines "fatigue" as being without sleep for a period in excess of 24 consecutive hours.

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There is a similar bill pending in Congress that would make drowsy driving laws a federal standard, but the bill has gone nowhere. The bill cites these statistics:

· "One hundred thousand police-reported motor vehicle crashes are caused by the drowsiness or fatigue of the operator."

· "Fifteen hundred deaths and 71,000 injuries are the direct result of a driver falling asleep at the wheel of a motor vehicle."

· "These crashes represent at least $12,500,000,000 in diminished productivity and property loss."

· "One million crashes are caused by driver inattention each year; and sleep deprivation and fatigue make such attention lapses more likely to occur."

· "In 1999, a scientifically conducted national survey of Americans found that 23 percent of respondents reported that they personally know someone who crashed in the past year due to falling asleep at the wheel."

· "In 2001, a scientifically conducted national survey of Americans found that in the past year — 53 percent of all adults reported driving while drowsy."

· "Nineteen percent reported that they had actually dozed off while driving."

· "One percent reported that they had crashed because they dozed off."

· "Young people under the age of 26, who tend to stay up late, sleep too little, and drive at night, represent about 55 percent of all fall asleep crashes."

· "There are over 20,000,000 shift workers in America and studies suggest that 20 percent to 30 percent of individuals with nontraditional work schedules have had a fatigue-related driving mishap in the last year."

A 2002 survey by the Washington, D.C.-based National Sleep Foundation reports that nearly two in 10 drivers say they have actually fallen asleep at the wheel in the past year.

Of course, drowsy driving laws are very difficult to enforce. Unlike drunk driving laws where cops can test a driver's breath or blood, testing for drowsiness is tougher.

Stateline said:

"I think someday you'll see this as a national law. I think you're going to have a lot of states considering it," said New Jersey state Sen. Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat. He was primary sponsor of the legislation known as "Maggie's Law," for Maggie McDonnell, a college student killed in 1997 by a driver who admitted to being awake for 30 hours before he crashed into her car.

Here's some background from the National Sleep Foundation, which supported Maggie's Law.

The Sleep Foundation says:

Sleepy drivers are as much of a danger, and sleep deprivation can cause impairment equal to drugs or alcohol. Two recent Australian studies demonstrate that being awake for 18 hours produces impairment equal to a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.05 percent and 0.1 percent after 24 hours; 0.08 percent is considered legally drunk. In a survey conducted by NSF in 1998, all states except Alabama stated that people can be charged under existing laws for causing a crash or fatality after falling asleep at the wheel.

The Insurance Journal has an interesting take on the Maggie's Law issue.

The 24 million Americans who work in extended hours jobs outside the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. will reportedly be particularly affected by Maggie's Law. Many extended hours employees routinely stay awake for 24 hours on their first nightshift of the workweek. Similarly, medical professionals and other emergency services personnel are often required to remain on-duty for 24-hour shifts. In emergency situations, utility linemen and technical support personnel work up to 48 hours without rest. These employees are confronted daily with the challenge of drowsy driving.

Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, chairman and CEO of Circadian Technologies, Inc. (Circadian) said, "We are seeing a steep increase in driver fatigue accident litigation. In fact, the US Department of Transportation identifies fatigue as the number one safety problem in transportation operations, with a cost in excess of $12 billion a year."

Just in time for everyone to travel and spread the bug coast to coast — the flu season is well under way early this year. The CDC says the flu has spread to a larger percentage of people than has been detected since 1976.

And one more piece of less than good news, this year's vaccine does not exactly match the strain doctors are seeing so far.

AP said:

"This is very serious," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She warned that flu season could be worse than usual.

Gerberding begged people to get an early flu shot to avoid a potentially staggering flu season nationwide.

The shot is recommended for adults over 50, children between 6 months and 2 years, people with chronic medical conditions, and people who work in health care. The vaccine is readily available this year, Gerberding said.

In an average year, the disease infects up to 20 percent of the U.S. population, killing about 36,000 Americans and hospitalizing 114,000.

So far this season, the outbreaks were strongest in Texas and Colorado in October and early November. Most of the country has had only sporadic flu infections …

But because this year's flu vaccine targets a slightly different type of H3N2 flu than patients are getting, doctors have no idea how well the vaccine will work. The virus changes slightly over time, a change doctors call 'drift,' which is why doctors suggest getting a new flu shot every year.

Resources:
· Flu vaccine facts and myths from the CDC
· Learn about the viruses from the CDC
· Do you have the flu, or just a cold? An online test

Where is the virus?

CDC says:

Influenza activity was reported as:

· Widespread in 1 state (Texas)
· Regional in 1 state (Colorado)
· Local in 8 states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia)
· Sporadic influenza activity was reported in 22 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming), New York City, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
· Eighteen states and the District of Columbia reported no influenza activity.

Exactly opposite of a national trend, some pediatricians in South Florida have stopped giving flu shots to children, partly because they say insurers don't pay enough, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

Doctors dropping flu shots runs contrary to a new position of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which for the first time is recommending that all infants get flu shots and that parents consider vaccinating all children.

The Sun-Sentinel said:

The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases says only one-third of 8 million high-risk children get vaccinated. Vaccine maker Aventis-Pasteur estimated in 2000 that 10 percent of children under age 18 got immunized.

The reasons are many and complex, said Len Novick, executive director of the foundation. A prime problem, he said, is that some health insurers don't cover the shots except for high-risk children or don't pay enough to cover the doctor's cost.

"Right now, all the health plans are not fully on line," he said.

Doctors pay $8 or less for a dose of vaccine and may be reimbursed zero to $15. They may fight for months to collect and decide it's not worth the trouble, said Dr. Jack Swanson, chairman of a practice guidelines committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Some doctors dropped flu shots when they couldn't get supplies during shortages of 2000 and 2001. Last year, some wound up with unsold vaccine on the shelves because their patients continued going to mass-vaccination programs at grocery stores and pharmacies, health officials said. Many now leave patients to get shots at the retail outlets and county health departments.

CNN reported:

Pop-ups are everywhere. In just the third quarter of this year, nearly 20 billion pop-up ads were served, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. That's up from 8 billion in the third quarter of 2002.

Clearly, the form resonates with advertisers, and for good reason: pop-ups are 13 times more likely than a standard banner ad to result in a clickthrough, according to Advertising.com.

That could be about to change. Sometime in the first half of 2004, Microsoft will introduce a pop-up-blocker application to a Service Pack upgrade for Windows XP.

Which means that pop-up-blocking software — until now something that many consumers had to actively hunt out and download — will soon come shipped with Internet Explorer, the browser that sits on more than 90 percent of desktops.

A Microsoft spokesperson said it's too early to tell whether the user will need to opt out of having the pop-ups blocked, but one thing's for certain: Pop-up advertising's days are numbered.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, story excerpts, and other materials from a variety of websites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed, and a link will be provided, whenever possible.