There have been three accidents involving truckers in Central Illinois within the past couple of weeks. Two of them resulted in fatalities.

A local medical center feels now is the appropriate time to introduce new technology that could limit these tragedies.

Officials at Hopedale Medical Complex are now offering sleep apnea testing for local truck drivers. The center says that every 16 minutes someone is injured or killed in a truck accident and they hope by testing truck drivers sleep patterns they can stop future crashes.

All of the most recent accidents involving truck drivers in this area have involved drivers over the age of 60. The hospital's Sleep Disorder director, Dr. Lawrence Rossi, said, "In my experience with dealing with older people that is one of the major complaints when they come to the office."

"I talk to them about their pain and some issues like that most of the time were talking about whether or not they sleep well and most of them don't."

HMC says they will use their new Resmed equipment to diagnose and treat sleep apnea at their center.

In each of the truck accidents there have been no reports saying a sleeping disorder resulted in the crashes.