I saqw on the news last night that apparently 1 in 5 people have fallen asleep while driving. I think this would be a hard case for the Crown to prove.Quebec authorities are going to charge a woman with "drowsy driving" -- only the second such prosecution in Canada.
The accused person is a suburban mom who was driving an SUV that allegedly jumped a curb in the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield on Jan. 27 and struck Erica Cadieux, who was out for a stroll with her baby Bianca.
Cadieux died, but Bianca wasn't hurt.
"So far everything leads us to believe from where we are in our investigation as we speak that the cause was fatigue," Paul Chablo of the Montreal Police said on April 5.
The accused will be in court next month on a charge of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death. Her lawyer hopes the court will treat the case as a simple, unfortunate accident.
There is no specific law governing driving a motor vehicle while fatigued.
"Driving while drowsy is not illegal, so you have to prove that while you drove, you were so drowsy that you should have realized you were doing something so incredibly negligent as to be criminal," said lawyer Jordan Charness.
Cadieux's family is now lobbying for such a law.
"It has to be Erica's law that addresses this issue," said Carlo Spadafora, Cadieux's husband.
In New Jersey, Maggie's Law holds that a driver who goes without sleep for 24 hours and kills someone could be sentenced to up to 10 years in jail.
However, there is no definitive test for when drowsiness becomes criminally dangerous, unlike a breathalyzer for alcohol.
I am not denying their is a problem and I know truck drivers especially, drive for long hours. I really do not know how you can do to prevent this other than educating people through commercials or newspaper ads to get it throughtheir heads not to drive while sleepy but even that may not reduce incidents of people falling asleep at the wheel.
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