What Is the Role of Sleep Apnea in Car Accidents?
Sleep apnea, a condition that affects the quality of your sleep, can cause serious consequences for drivers. Because of its impact on the quality of your rest, sleep apnea can impact your decision-making ability and alertness on the road, which endangers both you and others, possibly causing a car accident. If you suspect that you have sleep apnea, let our attorneys at Lombardi & Lombardi, P.A. guide you through your next steps.
How Does Sleep Apnea Affect Driving?
Sleep apnea repeatedly interrupts your breathing while you sleep, which impacts your sleep quality and usually results in significant daytime drowsiness. Those who deal with sleep apnea usually experience impaired concentration levels, decision-making ability, and reaction time—all of which can affect your driving. If you have a delayed response to traffic signals, sudden stops, or obstacles because of exhaustion, you significantly increase your risk of causing an accident.
Sleep apnea can also lead to micro-sleeps: brief, unintended periods of sleep that can put you and others on the road in danger, especially at high speeds or in heavy traffic.
Can Treatment for Sleep Apnea Prevent Accidents?
If you suffer from sleep apnea, we highly recommend seeking treatment: many of our clients have found that Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) therapy helps. CPAP helps maintain open airways while you sleep, which improves your overall rest quality.
While the micro-CPAP machines on the market may seem like cheaper alternatives to traditional CPAP therapy, be careful: these devices do not stimulate extra airwave pressure like full-sized CPAP machines do, which could make them ineffective for treating your sleep apnea. If you get behind the wheel thinking that your micro-CPAP machine helped, you could put yourself in harm’s way without knowing it.
Who Is Most Affected by Sleep Apnea?
On average, our clients who are overweight, male, or over 40 generally deal with sleep apnea more. But even young drivers need to pay attention to the signs: if you have a history of snoring, gasping for air during sleep, or excessive daytime fatigue, you may have sleep apnea without knowing it.
What Should You Do if You Have Been in an Accident with a Sleep Apnea Sufferer?
If you get into an accident and suspect that sleep apnea may have played a role in causing the crash, understand that failure to manage the symptoms of sleep apnea may count as negligence. If you believe the other driver’s exhaustion caused your collision, you may have legal recourse to file an insurance claim or personal injury lawsuit to recover your associated costs.
Whether your or the other driver’s sleep apnea contributed to the accident, we highly recommend hiring a seasoned car accident lawyer in your area to help you throughout the process.
Protect Your Rights with the Monmouth County Car Accident Lawyers at Lombardi & Lombardi, P.A.
Trust the Monmouth County car accident lawyers at Lombardi & Lombardi, P.A. to advocate for you and provide you with dedicated, personalized legal assistance after your car collision, no matter the cause. We will help you deal with all the legal nuances of sleep apnea–related cases and protect your rights from start to finish. Call us at 732-906-1500 or fill out our online form for a free consultation. Our Brick, Freehold, Point Pleasant, and Edison, New Jersey, offices serve car accident clients throughout New Jersey.
