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BOSTON, September 30, 2005 - Because of a sleepy driver, Milford's Amy Huther told lawmakers through tears yesterday, her wedding plans turned to funeral plans.

Three years after a driver dopey from a night of video gaming killed her fiance Robert Raneri, Huther is fighting to make "drowsy driving" a crime.

State Sen. Richard Moore, D-Uxbridge, sponsored a bill dubbed "Rob's Law" to create the crime of "sleeping while driving," which would carry the same penalties as drunken driving for anyone impaired by drowsiness or sleep deprivation.

The measure would create that charge of "motor vehicle homicide resulting from sleeping," that would have drowsy drivers who caused fatalities face the same penalties as those who were legally drunk.

"What killed Rob was not an accident," Huther, 39, told the joint Transportation Committee yesterday. "It was a crash caused by a driver who admittedly was awake for over 24 hours and made a conscious choice to get behind the wheel of a vehicle."

The teenage driver who killed Raneri, a 37-year-old Army Reserve major who was driving to his last day of work before his wedding, was charged with a misdemeanor offense.

That driver received a 10-year license suspension and five years of probation.

Moore wants such drowsy drivers to face felony charges, instead of misdemeanors that do not carry prison sentences, and educate the public about the increasingly prevalent problem.

"The average person doesn't equate it with drunk driving and that's part of the problem," Moore said. "People need to have an understanding of the symptoms, like blinking a lot and trying to keep their eyes open."

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 18 hours without sleep has the same physiological effect on the body as a 0.05 percent blood alcohol level, and 24 hours without sleep equals a 0.10 blood alcohol level. The legal limit in Massachusetts is 0.08 percent.

Approximately 2,000 Massachusetts drivers fall asleep at the wheel every day in Massachusetts, said Charles Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

There were 30,000 drowsy driving crashes in state during a recent five-year period, and more than 1.35 million across the nation during that time, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Czeisler said.

"The good news is, unlike heart attacks, sleep attacks do not occur without warning," Czeisler told the Transportation Committee.

Sleepy drivers who do not fall asleep but fall into a state of "sleep drunkenness" also can cause problems, he said.

"Your brain is making that transition to sleep ... the judgment centers are shutting down," Czeisler said describing the state in which drivers have been known to steer toward bright lights such as oncoming drivers' cars.

Moore's drowsy driving bill also would include drowsy driving in the causes for listing people as a "habitual traffic offenders" who can have their licenses suspended or revoked, permit police to place drivers presumed to be drowsy in protective custody, and create a commission to determine when a driver is guilty of drowsy driving.

The bill would require driver's education instructors, new drivers, new school bus drivers and public safety employees be educated on the hazards of drowsy driving. Accident reports would be required to note drowsy driving and an expert in sleep disorders would be appointed to the Registry of Motor Vehicle's medical advisory board.

New Jersey is the only state now with a drowsy driving law. 

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