MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — It probably happens to most drivers.
Heading home after an overtime shift and the eyelids flutter. Up all night with a sick baby and you rest your eyes for just a moment on the way to dropping off the kids at school. Drowsy drivers often make it safely to their destination, but for some, the consequences are devastating.
"To this day I still hear my boys crying out, yelling for Daddy, when they were told the news," says Jackie Califano, the widow of a New York police officer killed when a suspected drowsy driver plowed into his parked cruiser in 2011. "The pain we experienced is beyond description and continues to be."
More than 11,000 deaths were attributed to drowsy driving from 2000 to 2010, according to federal statistics. And experts say it's a problem that can't easily be solved by new laws because proving sleepiness behind the wheel is difficult, if not impossible.