“I was in a daze. I don’t know what I was thinking about and the next thing I know I was hitting the brakes.”
Those were William Rockefeller’s words to a law enforcement source, the New York Daily News reports, as investigators examine the moments leading up to the Metro North train derailment in the Bronx on Sunday that killed four and injured 75.
Unlike previously reported, Rockefeller seems to have been well-rested, officials say. “There’s every indication that he would have had time to get full restorative sleep,” Earl Weener of the National Transportation Safety Board told the Daily News.
While zoned out, it’s been suggested that Rockefeller may have slipped into what’s known as microsleep, when you nod off for just a few seconds, often without even knowing you’re doing so. People in microsleep might even still have their eyes open, or still carry out tasks “as if on a kind of auto-pilot,” ABC News reported.
That’s because during a microsleep, parts of the brain remain alert and awake while others doze off, according to a 2011 study in rats. Specific nerve cells in the brain entered a sleep-like state, according to the study, “with negative consequences on performance.”
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