Click here for a special offer. Click here for our free newsletter. Drowsy truckers are responsible for accidents that kill more than 750 people a year and injure nearly 20,000 more, the DOT estimates. Truck companies are trying to brake the proposal, noting they'd have to hire more drivers during a labor shortage.
Many drivers also oppose the black box, calling it an invasion of their privacy.
Fighting fire with fire, Glock, Beretta USA, Colt's Manufacturing, and four other gun makers are suing some of the government officials who have taken them to court. In the suit filed last week, the gun companies charge that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and 20 other state and city officials are conducting an illegal boycott of their weapons. The political battle is also heating up. French doctors reported in Science last week that the delivery of new genes to two infants helped save them from a rare and devastating disorder known as bubble boy disease. Before treatment, the afflicted babies were confined to sterile chambers because of a faulty gene that left their bodies' immune systems defenseless.