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There is no question that you can reset the alerter and quickly fall asleep.  And you can sleep right up to the next alerter alarm.  So a person can sleep entirely through the time lapses between alerter alarms. The only question this raises is whether the person sleeping up to and after the alerter alarm reset can actually sleep during the alarm reset.  For the answer to that question, we need a definition of sleep. It is one thing to sleep through the time lapse on either side of a reset; and another thing to sleep continuously through the time lapse and the reset.  But for all practical purposes, either process is problematic.  Whether or not a person is actually awake during the reset is not particularly relevant if they are sleeping entirely through the quiet phases between alerts.  The fundamental problem with the alerter is that it creates a false sense of security, which can reassure an engineer that he does not have to struggle to stay awake if he is confident that nothing requiring his attention will arise within the next alerter cycle.  Without an alerter, and engineer knows that falling asleep might suspend consciousness long enough get into a train handling situation that requires his response.     If an engineer is sleeping between alerts, and is awake during the reset, it suggests that the engineer would look around and assess the situation to make sure nothing requires his attention before going back to sleep.  However, the more time the engineer spends assessing the situation before going back to sleep, the shorter his next nap will be.  So there is an incentive to just reset the alerter with as little sleep disruption as possible.  In such a case, there would be a limited awareness during the reset even if one is awake.
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