Truckie health risks targeted
POOR WORKING CONDITIONS ARE EXPOSING KIWI TRUCK drivers to serious health and safety problems, an Otago researcher believes. And Dr Rebbecca Lilley, a senior research fellow at the University of Otago’s Injury Prevention Research Unit, is doing something about it.
She has secured a $245,000 research grant to explore the feasibility of carrying out a national survey of truck drivers.
She believes that serious health and safety risks faced by truck drivers are, in many cases, being ignored.
“I’d like to bring the problems out from the shadows,” Lilley told TheOtagoDailyTimes.
“With the COVID-19 situation, it has become very clear how essential truck drivers are to a well-functioning society,” she said.
She says that truck drivers are a “neglected” occupational group – with an average of around 10 truckies a year dying in crashes in the 10 years from 2005 to 2014.
Lilley says that international evidence has shown that truck drivers are at higher levels of risk when it comes to health and injury events – arising in part from “unsatisfactory” working conditions.
Spending long periods of time away from home, the absence of nourishing meals and other commercial pressures on drivers arising from the highly competitive road transport industry are factors in that, she believes.
A preliminary NZ study “shows the rates of worker fatalities vary widely by age, sex, ethnicity, occupation and industry and are a very serious problem for particular groups,” Lilley says.
“Future efforts to address NZ’s high rates of work-related fatal injuries should use these findings to aid understanding (of ) where preventive actions should be prioritised.”
In order to identify the opportunities to provide a healthier and safer work environment for NZ truck drivers, one aim of a full national study would be to determine the patterns of exposure to suspected and known occupational health and safety risks.
It would also hopefully identify the prevalence of adverse health behaviours and health and safety outcomes among Kiwi truckies.
Lilley adds: “The longterm aim of a full study would be to develop evidence-based health and safety policy, intervention(s), and resources that address the specific health and safety issues of truck drivers.
“Our previous Health Research Council-funded Work-related Fatal Injury Study that utilised coronial records to review all injury deaths for work involvement, identified that truck drivers have a high rate of work-related fatal injury.
“Professional truck drivers are also involved in a disproportionately high number of fatal crashes involving the driving public. Truck driver impairment, including poor health, was a significant contributor to this burden. The Work-related Fatal Injury Study estimated that heavy trucks are involved in fatal crashes that contributed to 15% of the annual road toll.”
International evidence that highlights truckies’ higher risk of adverse health and injury outcomes due to poor health, detail their increased risk of sleep apnoea, fatigue, diabetes, heart disease, lung cancer and other cancers…in addition to an increased risk of traffic crashes.
Says Lilley: “Often these health and safety concerns are directly attributed to unsatisfactory working conditions, such as long working days.”
This was confirmed by a recent small qualitative study in
New Zealand, carried out by AUT PhD student Claire TederstedtGeorge, which Lilley says clearly highlighted the “perilous and neglected” state of truck driver health and safety in NZ.
“To date, there is little quantifiable national level knowledge about the nature and distribution of health and safety risks for truck drivers, or the likely impact of these risks on health and injury outcomes.”
The recently-announced funding will enable Health Research Council-funded investigation into the feasibility of using “an untested intercept method to survey NZ truck drivers and, as part of this, will test the acceptability of using a survey tool from the United States to obtain subjective and objective data on truck driver health and safety.”
To identify the opportunities to provide a healthier and safer work environment for NZ truck drivers, a full national study would aim to determine the patterns of exposure to suspected and known occupational health and safety risks….
And to identify the prevalence of adverse health behaviours and health and safety outcomes among truck drivers. T&D