Engineer in the New York train derailment may have suffered a “sleep attack”

The engineer of the train that derailed in New York this past weekend said to the National Transportation Safety Board that he was in “a daze” while operating the machine. His lawyer, Jeffrey Chartier, called it “an autopilot kind of thing,” leading William Rockefeller to take the dangerous curve three times too fast.

Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, an expert in sleep medicine, referred to this kind of episode as a “sleep attack,” which occurs “when sleep intrudes involuntarily into the waking brain and seizes control of the brain, so that the person who is doing their best to try to stay awake is overcome by exhaustion and fatigue.”

Chairman of the NTSB, Deborah Hersman, commented to NBC News that “Fatigue has been an insidious problem particularly in the rail industry. We’ve seen many freight rail, passenger rail and commuter rail accidents where fatigue has been a factor.”

Investigators will also take into account the fact that Rockefeller had recently switched to an early shift. He usually started work in the afternoon, but two weeks before the accident, his shift moved to a 5 a.m. start time. Though his lawyer says he was well rested, the time change may have had an impact on his ability to function.