Driving In Your Sleep

Ever drive someplace and realize on arrival that your mind had been totally elsewhere? That’s probably a bad thing, but it doesn’t compare with what the Food and Drug Administration is warning against.

People who take some of the latest sleep medications are actually getting out of bed, getting in their cars and going for a ride. They come back home (with any luck), go back to bed and have no memory of the drive.

The FDA has at least a dozen reports of this, and is concerned that many more sleep-driving incidents are going unreported. Doctors and patients, consider yourselves warned.

This makes putting on makeup, shaving, and having animated phone conversations at the wheel sound positively safe by comparison.

Another Case of The Jet Blues

And just where do you think you’re going this weekend? Hope it’s not by plane, because winter still isn’t done with us yet, and another blizzard is putting the heat on the airlines.

JetBlue, still smarting from its failures during the last big nor’easter, canceled more than 200 flights today. Some other airlines- notably USAirways- are also slashing their schedules.

“We’ve always tried to take a wait-and-see approach with the weather… believing that people want to get to their destination late, rather than never,” (JetBlue spokesman Sebastian) White said Friday. But since the Feb. 14 storm — and the maelstrom of complaints that followed — JetBlue has had “a shift in thinking,” he said.

AP/MSNBC

“Oh, shift!” may be close to what JetBlue thought when they saw the weather forecast for this weekend. The airline made some generous promises to passengers after last month’s debacle, and this weekend’s refunds and re-schedules are sure to cost millions. But the little airline that got big too fast would rather shell out than flame out, with a second big blow to its reputation.