Classmate killed a women and only got 10 days in jail.

[Elhaym]

A drunk truck driver killed my grandfather decades ago and never went to prison. We live in a funny world huh

[poser765]

This applies to the railroad as well. When stopped at a signal the Engineer and Conductor will decide who gets to nap first and who gets to stare at a red light and listen to the radio for the first hour. Since it's fairly common to spend 3-4 hours staring at the same signal this doesn't hamper operations and allows the crew to work safely once their train does get the departure signal or allows them to drive home more rested if they are being re-crewed.

Ah interesting. I kind of figured the case would be similar for you guys. i feel like we share a lot when it comes to fatigue and rest.

[Captain N]

Ah interesting. I kind of figured the case would be similar for you guys. i feel like we share a lot when it comes to fatigue and rest.

Here's our rules for rest:

1. Hours of Service - After 12 hours On Duty a crew is considered "Dead" and may no longer perform railroad related tasks. The crew will remain On Duty while Deadheading (Being transported from their train back to their home terminal).

2. Upon tie up (punching out) a trainman will enter a state of Undisturbed Rest for 10 hours. During this time he is completely removed from being contacted by the railroad for any reason whatsoever.

3. Federal Rest - (Known Best As The One Day In Seven Law) after their sixth consecutive start a trainman enters a state of Federal Rest. Similar to Undisturbed Rest this prohibits the railroad from contacting the employee for 48 hours.

Do you guys have something similar to this?

[Ayla]

I've sort of trained myself to sleep in the back of an airplane. It's almost a Pavlovian response at this point. "Ladies and gentlemen, the main cabin door has been closed, all large electronics need to be powered down and stowed and all handheld devices need to be in airplane" is pretty much Pavlov's bell the puts me right to sleep.

I'll go one step further and mention something that some of you may or may not be aware of...the pilots up front sleep often. Not both at the same time, obviously, but cat naps (or "studying the overhead panel" as we refer to it) happen a lot. And it does nothing but increase safety of flight.

Yea, I always knew my pilots tend to have naps. But, no back of the plane for me. That just screams "Ok, Time to get nauseous" But I suppose the front and the back are really no different for someone like you O.o

[Trassk]

Its a touchy subject, but given someone died because of an accident, your classmate now more then likely will have this hanging over him for the rest of his life, which is a worse sentence then serving time in jail. If he was a remorseless asshole then I'd say otherwise.

[poser765]

Here's our rules for rest:

1. Hours of Service - After 12 hours On Duty a crew is considered "Dead" and may no longer perform railroad related tasks. The crew will remain On Duty while Deadheading (Being transported from their train back to their home terminal).

2. Upon tie up (punching out) a trainman will enter a state of Undisturbed Rest for 10 hours. During this time he is completely removed from being contacted by the railroad for any reason whatsoever.

3. Federal Rest - (Known Best As The One Day In Seven Law) after their sixth consecutive start a trainman enters a state of Federal Rest. Similar to Undisturbed Rest this prohibits the railroad from contacting the employee for 48 hours.

Do you guys have something similar to this?

Yeah, ours are pretty similar just a lot more convoluted...the rules actually just changed January of this year and we are still working on figuring them out. Basically it's like this.

1. We can not exceed 8 hours of actual flight time.
2. We can't exceed fly after 14 hours of duty in a 24 period. Duty pretty much starts at our first report time of the day and goes till our last release. So anytime we are required to be at the airport.
3. I minimum of 10 hours free from all duty with 8 hours "sleep oppurtunity" resets 1 and 2
4. Basically no more than 30 hours of flight time in the last 7 days without 30 hours free from duty.

That's in essentially. 1 and 2 actually vary in time based on time of report and number of legs flown, but 8/14 is a good general number. There are also all sorts of convoluted rules that allow us to extend our duty up to 16 hours, convoluted rules for short and long call reserves, time zone changes...it's a mess.

The old rules were a lot simply but had some pretty glaring deficiencies. Under the old rules we could actually legally fly with only 8 hours of rest. Our rest doesn't start in the hotel...but 15 minutes after block in. How many times have you still been near the airplane 15 minutes after the doors opened waiting for bags or to just get off? And duty starts at report to the gate. A lot of times that would leave us with 6 hours of actual rest in a bed. Bad stuff. New rules eliminated that.

[JohnBrown1917]

I would be really interested to hear how you'd sing if it was your mother/father/wife dead and the guy got out of jail sentence simply by "Oh sorry I was asleep".

Reckless homicide is a death in the end and should have a real sentence (not as harsh as willful killing, but still sentence). Stupidity, laziness, carelessness and disregard for others is not a excuse.

Thats an appeal to emotion, cases should be approached in an objective manner. I can't find anything that proof this was a case of reckless driving instead of an accident.

[Vargur]

So last year a classmate of mine fell asleep while driving and ended up killing a pedestrian.

Today he was told he only had to serve 10 days of a 90 day sentence, 5 years probation, 300 hours of community service, and license suspension for a year. I'm pretty sure they dropped the charge from vehicular homicide to something lesser as well.

I feel bad for both sides and my classmate is a nice guy but is that really it? Just fishing for other opinions on this.

Well, that should cover it. Involuntary manslaughter doesn't mean much.

[Spectral]

I don't think anyone just passes clean the fuck out while at the wheel. You feel yourself getting tired then make the decision that you'll be okay and continue driving.

Evidently you're not familiar with microsleep:

MSs often occur as a result of sleep deprivation, though normal non-sleep deprived individuals can also experience MSs during monotonous tasks.

44% of drivers during late-night driving become dangerously sleepy.

I don't see any reason to shun this guy because he was unlucky enough to slam into someone during one of those intermittent periods. Most people I've talked to about it say they've experienced the sensation of not knowing where a chunk of time went while driving; this likely includes extremely short periods where the brain is essentially asleep.

[poser765]

Evidently you're not familiar with microsleep:



I don't see any reason to shun this guy because he was unlucky enough to slam into someone during one of those intermittent periods. Most people I've talked to about it say they've experienced the sensation of not knowing where a chunk of time went while driving; this likely includes extremely short periods where the brain is essentially asleep.

Damn spectral...you must have /threaded this bitch right in the face...it's been dead for a couple of hours.