Truck Drivers’ Health and Crash Risk

Commercial truck drivers with three or more medical conditions double to quadruple their chance for being in a crash than healthier drivers, reports a study led by investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

The findings suggest that a trucker’s poor health could be a detriment not only to himself but also to others around him.

“What these data are telling us is that with decreasing health comes increased crash risk, including crashes that truck drivers could prevent,” says the study’s lead author Matthew Thiese, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (RMCOEH). The results were published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

However, staying healthy can be tough for truck drivers, who typically sit for long hours behind the wheel, deal with poor sleeping conditions, and have a hard time finding nutritious meals on the road.

The study’s examination of medical records from 49,464 commercial truck drivers finds evidence that truckers’ relatively poor health may put them at risk in more ways than one. Thirty four percent have signs of at least one of several medical conditions that had previously been linked to poor driving performance, from heart disease, to low back pain, to diabetes.

Matching drivers’ medical and crash histories revealed that drivers with at least three of the flagged conditions were more likely to have been involved in a crash. There were 82 truck drivers in the highest risk group, and results were calculated from millions of data points reflecting their relative crash risk every day for up to seven years. The investigators found that this group was at higher risk for different categories of crashes, including accidents that caused injury, and that could have been avoided.

The rate of crashes resulting in injury among all truck drivers was 29 per 100 million miles traveled. For drivers with three or more ailments, the frequency increased to 93 per 100 million miles traveled, according to Thiese. The trends held true even after taking into consideration other factors that influence truckers driving abilities such as age and amount of commercial driving experience.

The new findings could mean that one health condition, say diabetes, is manageable but diabetes in combination with high blood pressure and anxiety could substantially increase a driver’s risk.

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