What does research say about truck driver health?

You may have a hard time staying healthy if you work long hours or sit for hours at a time at your job in Texas, or if you have trouble sleeping. The truck driver next to you may be going through the same struggle. As Science Daily points out, most over-the-road truck drivers suffer from these circumstances and more. However, their health may be directly linked to their job performance – and your safety.

This information comes from a study of the medical records and crash histories of over 49,000 truck drivers. Researchers were looking for ways that health could affect the risk of truck crashes. For example, past studies have shown that diabetes can affect driving performance. Low back pain, heart disease and high blood pressure are also linked to poor driving.

You might expect a person with these types of conditions to take steps to manage them, and scientists discovered that for many drivers, this may be the case. However, as much as 34 percent of truck drivers have at least one health issue that raises the risk of a crash.

When a driver has three or more of these types of health problems, he or she becomes a much bigger threat to you, and to everyone else on the road. That driver is more than twice as likely to cause an injury crash, regardless of age and experience. Three-fourths of crash victims involved in truck accidents are in passenger vehicles. This information is educational in nature and should not replace legal advice.