Michial Jacobs was struck by a tractor trailer driven by Thomas Lloyd on Oct. 2, 2004. The truck was going 55 miles per hour.

Lloyd fell asleep at the wheel.

Police reports say Jacobs suffered a fractured rib and sustained a concussion.

Jacobs sued Lloyd’s employers, Pacific Transportation Services and Ernie Newland. The employers admitted liability for the crash but contested the extent of Jacobs’ injuries.

Jacobs says he also suffered an injury to his mid-back which resulted in chronic pain. He says he hasn’t been able to return to work as a carpenter.

The employers offered to settle for the insurance policy limits on the claim, but Jacobs rejected that.

the old stand-by, caffeine.

A study published in the Cochrane Library shows caffeine worked better than naps at reducing errors and improving performance among late-night workers. It worked as well as prescription medications and light therapy — and it costs less than those.

The research didn’t look directly at worker injuries, but safety pros know an alert worker is less likely to be injured.

Third-shift workers suffer more injuries on the job. Some of the biggest workplace disasters occurred on the night shift: the Exxon Valdez and the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear incidents.

Although no correlation has been shown yet to fatigued workers, the recent BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico also happened at the start of the overnight shift.

So the good news for night workers who’ve relied on caffeine is that there’s no reason to discontinue doing so, if they’re healthy.

The best way for them to take advantage of caffeine’s effects: small doses spread out over time.

If night workers find they’re losing concentration, a 20-minute break with caffeine might help. That’s how long it takes for the substance to have an effect.

The new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) policy took effect April 5.

The old rule was based on outdated versions of antidepressants that could cause drowsiness and other side effects.

Some pilots had kept their use of the medications a secret because of the previous rule. They were concerned they’d lose their certification to fly.

Under the new policy, pilots who take Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa or Lexapro will be allowed to fly if they’ve been successfully treated for a year without side effects that could pose a safety hazard in the cockpit.

The FAA is also granting amnesty for some pilots taking those four medications, known as SSRIs. The agency won’t take civil enforcement action against pilots who disclose their diagnosis of depression and treatment within six months.

The Army, Civil Aviation Authority of Australia and Transport Canada already allow some pilots to fly who are using antidepressants.

Does your company ask employees in safety-sensitive jobs to disclose certain types of medications they’re taking? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Here’s one link between employee wellness and safety: As obesity becomes more common, more employees may suffer from a condition that makes them sleepy at work.

People are considered at risk for sleep apnea if they have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more and a neck circumference of 17 inches or more.

Someone 5 feet 10 inches tall would have a BMI of 30 if they weighed 209 pounds. (Click here for a BMI chart.)

In 2008, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s medical review board recommended that commercial truck drivers with a BMI more than 30 be screened for sleep apnea. The FMCSA hasn’t adopted that recommendation, even though its own statistics show 26% of drivers suffer from the condition.

Some trucking firms are addressing the issue without government regulation. Schneider National recently started to diagnose and treat their drivers in an effort to reduce healthcare costs and reduce crash risks.

Schneider found 17% of its drivers had sleep apnea. Because of its program, the company has seen a significant reduction in the frequency and severity of crashes.

Drivers diagnosed with sleep apnea are required by the FMCSA to be disqualified until it’s been treated. However, a test for sleep apnea isn’t included in the licensing process for commercial drivers.

With a lack of regulations, it’s up to companies to decide how to address this wellness-safety link, not to mention others.

Does your company have a wellness program for employees? Do you think such programs help decrease the risk of certain types of workplace injuries? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

CNN says Colgan Air told crews they may not call in fatigued if they’ve had a 12-hour or longer rest break.

This week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued its report on Continental Flight 3407 that crashed near Buffalo, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

The NTSB said pilot error caused the Feb. 12, 2009 crash. It also said fatigue did hurt performance of the two pilots but couldn’t be blamed for the crash.

One of three NTSB board members did vote to include fatigue as a cause of the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration says tired pilots are supposed to call in fatigued and not fly.

But CNN says Colgan Air recently issued a memo, stating that its safety department would decide whether a fatigue call is acceptable and that blatant use of fatigue calls would be handled with disciplinary action.

Colgan and the pilots union say they’re working to revise the policy. The union says it opposes the presumed guilty approach of the memo and it wants the policy to be non-punitive.

This news about Colgan Air also follows a recent study which confirms that when workers try to catch up on a sleep deficit with ten hours of rest, it still leaves them vulnerable to accidents and errors.

Is Colgan’s policy reasonable? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

After going for long periods without sleep, workers may not be able to make up for it by sleeping longer on weekends, according to the study.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston put young adults on a sleep schedule that a medical resident might experience: 33 hours awake followed by 10 hours sleeping.

That works out to about 5.6 hours of sleep every 24 hours.

The sleep-deprived subjects, along with a control group, were given performance tasks to test their ability to pay attention and gauge their reaction time.

Those who had less sleep performed the same as the control group if the test was given just two hours after they had awakened.

But, the sleep-deprived subjects performed significantly worse on tests that were given after 30 hours spent awake. And the results got worse as the study went from one to three weeks.

The subjects appeared to have developed a sleep debt that could not be made up by sleeping 10 hours at a time.

In the real world, a person who is regularly sleep deprived during weekdays might try to catch up on weekends. The person might feel pretty good during the first few hours after their long sleep, but the next time they lose sleep their work performance may start to deteriorate.

The findings are particularly applicable to people who work odd-hour jobs such as health workers, truckers and emergency responders.

In a court settlement with Public Citizen, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has agreed to reissue the rules. Public Citizen and other groups had filed a lawsuit contesting the regulations.

Under FMCSA’s Nov. 19, 2008 Final Rule on Hours of Service for Drivers, driving hours expanded from 10 to 11  hours within a 14-hour window. Drivers could also restart their weekly on-duty limits after having at least 34 consecutive hours off duty.

Public Citizen and other groups claimed that commercial drivers would be less safe if they were allowed to drive more hours per week.

FMCSA has agreed to propose a new rule no later than July 2010. The agency has also agreed to publish a final rule by July 2011.

The court settlement is online here (PDF).

A government labor official says a McDonald’s store manager who died of a brain hemorrhage was a victim of “karoshi” — death by overwork.

The 41-year-old woman had worked more than 80 hours of overtime per month on average for the six months before her death. She suffered from headaches for three weeks before the brain hemorrhage.

She collapsed during a training program and died in the hospital three days later.

The determination that work caused her death makes her dependent family members eligible to receive a public pension.

Japan’s welfare and labor ministry investigates whether deaths are caused by overwork if the employee worked 80 or more hours of overtime for the preceding six months or 100 hours for the previous one month.

The ministry attributes about 150 deaths each year to karoshi, usually through strokes or heart attacks.

Earlier this year, a judge ruled a man’s suicide was due to his working conditions and ordered his employer to pay 100 million yen ($1.2 million) to his surviving relatives.

A judge ruled the company, an agricultural co-operative, failed to fulfill its duty to ensure workplace safety and prevent his death.

Do you think it’s possible to determine if an employee’s stroke or heart attack was caused by working too many hours? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Imagine this: Two of your employees who work together both get little sleep before performing a safety-sensitive task. Then, the two are involved in an incident that kills 50 people.

A major focus of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 on Feb. 12 has been on whether the captain and co-pilot were fatigued.

Co-pilot Rebecca Shaw lived with her parents near Seattle and commuted across the country to her job. The night before the accident, Shaw flew overnight from Seattle and changed planes in Memphis before reporting for the early morning flight out of Newark, NJ.

It’s unclear whether Captain Marvin Renslow slept the night before the trip. He was in the middle of a two-day assignment. The night before, he logged into a computer in a crew room, according to NTSB documents.

The crash killed all 49 people on the plane and one person on the ground.

The problem of fatigued employees isn’t limited to pilots. Fatigue costs U.S. employers $136 billion annually in health-related costs and lost worker productivity — not to mention potential lawsuits in cases involving serious injury or death.

What can be done?

You can’t follow your employees home to tuck them into bed at night. Most of the responsibility for being alert at work falls on employees themselves.

However, there are some tips you can give workers and some things you can do to improve alertness. Among the things workers can do:

• Set regular hours for sleeping. The average adult needs eight hours a night, but some require up to 10.
• Avoid caffeine three to five hours before going to bed.
• Naps can help if they’re less than an hour or longer than 90 minutes. That way, workers are less likely to wake up during deep sleep.
• Develop overall good health habits such as daily physical activity and a balanced diet.

For companies with night or long shifts, bright light and cooler temperatures enhance alertness. If possible, schedule the most tedious tasks early in a shift. Moderate physical activity during breaks, such as taking a walk, helps, too.

Employees should have at least ten hours between work shifts.

Have you taken steps to encourage workers in safety-sensitive positions to get proper rest? Let us know about what you’ve done, or leave us a comment on this story, in the box below.

John Keenan crashed his car into another driven by Laurie Riley. Her husband, Gregory, was a passenger.

While her husband’s injuries were minor, Laurie suffered knee and pelvis injuries that left her unable to work.

The Rileys claim Keenan’s long work shifts at Glen Habina & Sons, Inc., were partially to blame for the accident.

Keenan usually worked eight-to-nine hour days as a vehicle driver. But sometimes, after he completed his driving shift, he worked several more hours repairing vehicles.

On the day of the accident, Keenan worked his regular shift but didn’t work any extra hours repairing vehicles.

After work, he went to at least one bar. After the accident, his blood-alcohol level was measured at .178. At trial, an expert estimated that Keenan had consumed 13 12-ounce beers before the accident.

The Rileys claimed the combination of work fatigue and alcohol consumption caused the crash and sought to hold two bars and his employer responsible.

Good news for employers: A jury and then a state appeals court both ruled sensibly. They found that the alcohol consumption was a factor in the crash, but not work fatigue because on the day of the crash he hadn’t worked long hours.

The appeals court noted other courts have found employers liable when their employees cause auto accidents after required long work shifts.

But the court said that wasn’t the case here. Keenan worked only nine hours on the day in question, and he had a sufficient rest period — at least 13.5 hours — before his previous shift.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) analyzed data from the Georgia Study of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, in which 6,530 randomly selected adults were interviewed. Sixteen percent of Georgia’s residents experience persistent problems staying awake during the day. However, only 10% of the people in the study reported having been diagnosed with a sleep disorder.

The study also found:

• 35% wake up in the morning feeling unrefreshed
• 31% can’t sleep through the night, and
• 25% complain they have problems falling asleep.

Study author, Michael Decker, notes people who don’t get enough sleep, or have poor quality sleep, present hazards in their jobs and on the roads.

His suggestion: Educate workers about the symptoms of sleep disorders and prompt them to seek appropriate medical care.

The CDC has a new Web site with information about sleep disorders. The study can be found online here.

Participants worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts. Subjects worked three nights, had two days off, and then worked four more nights. Their sleep schedule:

• 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. after the first two night shifts
• 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. after the third night shift
• 3 a.m. to 12 noon on the two days off, and
• 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. after the final four night shifts.

Participants also:

• were exposed to five, 15-minute, intermittent bright light pulses each night shift
• wore dark sunglasses when outside, and
• received outdoor afternoon light exposure.

Workers who followed this regimen had increased performance and alertness during nights shifts and were able to work nights while achieving more normal daytime schedules on their days off compared to control subjects.

Conventional wisdom for night workers has been to maintain the same sleep schedule on days off as on work days. However, this meant they couldn’t be awake during normal daytime hours and enjoy their days off.

The study was conducted by Rush University Medical Center and appears in the December issue of the journal SLEEP.

The new Pennsylvania law ensures that nurses and other caregivers won’t be forced to work double shifts, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

A University of Pennsylvania study shows the risk of medical error was as much as three times higher when a nurse worked a shift of 12.5 hours or longer.

A survey by the Pennsylvania Department of Health showed 13.6% of the state’s registered nurses had experienced mandatory OT in the two weeks before taking the survey.

The law gives healthcare facilities time to hire more nurses. The mandatory OT ban doesn’t go into effect until July 1, 2009.

How does your company balance the need for employees to put in OT and the added safety risks of fatigue? Let us know in the Comments Box below.