This is news?
Have these people never heard of Fatal Insomnia?
Yes, people have, and continue to die horrible deaths from Fatal Familial Insomnia, a type of insomnia that usually occurs in your 30s or 40s, and soon makes you go crazy, blind, and dead.

I didn't read all the linked article, but I'm assuming it's talking about the experiments where they put rats and mice on treadmills for weeks at a time so they'd have to keep walking, and staying awake. Those experiments were done 30 years ago....I didn't know anyone still wondered if sleep deprivation would kill you.

Anyway, these days no one is going to let a little thing like a week or two of staying awake stop them from driving while texting and eating, despite all the research on reaction times, so it's pretty much a moot point since they'll die in a car crash long before that.