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Commercial Driver Safety Risk Factors
The objective of this study was to prospectively examine a wide array of driver personal and situational factors to determine the prevalence of these factors as well as their relationship to being involved in a crash. This study involved the collection of driver medical, demographic, and other personal factors to examine the relationship between these factors with various safety outcomes. Interested drivers completed initial study materials during a driver orientation session with the participating carrier at one of eight different recruitment sites across the United States. Safety outcomes included crash data from the participating carrier and crashes and moving violation convictions from national datasets. Depending on the analysis, exposure included the driver’s tenure at the participating carrier during the study or the amount of time under observation during the study. Data from over 21,000 drivers were collected, and 20,753 of these drivers were included in the analyses. Many of the prevalence rates for several of the medical conditions were similar to or above the U.S. averages. In general, those receiving treatment for a medical condition were no riskier in terms of safety outcomes than drivers without the medial condition and, in several cases, were less risky than those who did not have the medical condition. When there was an increase in risk in one or more of the safety outcomes, it was usually associated with the driver not receiving treatment or the driver not being clinically diagnosed with the medical condition (and thus not receiving treatment).
Read the full study here.