Medical work hours: time for a Maggie's Law for doctoring? administration

摘要

In June 2003, the New Jersey state legislature passed 'Maggie's Law' establishing that causing vehicular homicide without having sleep for a period in excess of 24 consecutive hours is a criminal offence.1 This law was passed after intensive lobbying by the family of 20-year-old college student Maggie McDonnell, who was killed when a driver crossed three lanes of highway traffic and hit her car head-on. The male driver admitted he had been awake for 30 h before the accident, but due to a lack of legal precedent, with driving without sleep not being considered a 'crime', he received only a suspended jail sentence and 200 fine. In the UK, a driver who was alleged to have fallen asleep at the wheel after a night without sleep ran onto a main train track causing the Selby train disaster, and was recently jailed for 5 years. Increasingly, society and its legal systems are recognizing that, for most people, falling asleep behind the wheel is foreseeable, avoidable and an act of criminal recklessness.