Prosecutors Seek Ways To Charge Drowsy Drivers

Coffee. What else is there to say?

Roadside signs around the country have long warned drivers not to doze off behind the wheel with gentle catchphrases like "You Snooze, You Lose" and "Drive Alert, Arrive Alive."

Now the campaign against so-called drowsy driving is moving to the courtroom, with law enforcement officials increasingly pushing to hold sleepy drivers criminally accountable when they cause fatal crashes.

In the most high-profile case to date, Bronx jurors have been wrestling this week with a difficult and subjective question: just how tired is too tired to drive? The defendant in this case, Ophadell Williams, was driving a bus on what prosecutors said was just a few hours of sleep when it crashed in the early morning hours, killing 15 passengers. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.