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DRIVERS' HEALTH
* Sweden - Volvo study equates fatigue, drinkingStockholm,Sweden -Land Line Magazine (Grain Valley,MO,USA) -May 2 , 2007: -- Researchers at Volvo Trucks say the similarities between driving while exhausted and driving while intoxicated are “remarkable”... Volvo conducted the tests at its proving grounds in Sweden, comparing the performance of tired drivers with those of drivers who’d consumed alcohol... According to a press release, cameras mounted in the cabs showed that both sets of drivers displayed similar impairments in terms of concentration and reaction time...
* USA - Study - The Sleep of Long-Haul Truck Drivers
Mass,USA -The New England Journal of Medicine, by Merrill M. Mitler, Ph.D., James C. Miller, Ph.D., Jeffrey J. Lipsitz, M.D., James K. Walsh, Ph.D., and C. Dennis Wylie, B.A. (originally published September 11, 1997) -May 2007: -- ... There is increasing public and regulatory interest in the health consequences of fatigue, sleep deprivation, disruption of circadian rhythms, and sleep disorders. Driver fatigue was recently judged to be the number-one problem in commercial transportation... * Design of the Study: -- Driving schedules that represented the most demanding operations permissible were selected from the U.S. and Canadian trucking industries. In both countries the longest time on duty per day (which includes the time spent driving plus all other time at work) for drivers is 15 hours, the shortest off-duty time is 8 hours, and the longest time on duty during a seven-day period is 60 hours. However, drivers can drive only a total of 10 hours without having 8 hours off in the United States and 13 hours without 8 hours off in Canada. We used a parallel-group design to compare four driving schedules, two in the United States and two in Canada. The design and the associated informed-consent form were reviewed and approved by the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation and by the Transportation Development Centre of Transport Canada. The trucking companies that contributed trucks and personnel asked not to be identified... The 80 drivers had a total of 400 principal sleep periods (5 for each driver), 200 10-hour trips, and 160 13-hour trips. Over 96 percent of all data points from the principal sleep periods were collected. Our software required all data points, so missing data were replaced with means for the driver in question. The results of analyses of variance that replaced missing data with the grand means rather than means for the subject were similar... Truck drivers in the study obtained less sleep than is required for alertness on the job and the greatest vulnerability to unwanted sleep or sleep-like states was during the late night and early morning, a finding that is consistent with published data on other industries. Other studies have shown a smaller midafternoon period of vulnerability to unwanted sleep. We may have missed detecting such a period because there was considerable irregularity in the times that drivers were on duty and there were only 20 drivers on any one schedule... Since physicians are a primary source of information about fitness for duty and its relation to sleep, they should be alert to the possibility of sleep deprivation in people who engage in shift work. It is also important to recognize the deleterious synergistic effects on alertness of alcohol and other sedatives in the presence of sleep deprivation or medical conditions known to increase the tendency to fall asleep, such as sleep apnea... Our findings underscore the need to educate workers and schedulers about the importance of adequate sleep with respect to public safety...
* USA - Risk Assessment of Long-Haul Truck Drivers - The prevalence of sexual risk factors and STI/HIV in US drivers is unknown
Birmingham,AL,USA -clinicaltrials.gov/University of Alabama -April 2007: -- International studies have repeatedly documented a substantial prevalence of sexual risk behaviors and high rates of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections (STI) ranging from 5%-56% amongst long-distance truck drivers (“truckers”) living in diverse international settings including India, Bangladesh, South Africa, China, Laos and Thailand. The prevalence of sexual risk factors and STI/HIV in US drivers is unknown. This proposal will provide both qualitative and quantitative data on HIV risk behaviors by interviewing and testing truckers working for established long-distance trucking firms, the sector which accounts for most of the jobs in the trucking and warehousing industry in the United States. The data obtained from this study will be used to inform the development of an HIV prevention intervention for long-haul truck drivers... Location and Contact Information: Please refer to this study by ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00381992 - Laura H Bachmann, MD, MPH 205-975-5500 gret@uab.edu
* USA - Drugs turn up in 10% of truckers tested during state police sweep - Prescriptions may account for some of the 500 samples
Salem,OR,USA -The Statesman Journal, by RUTH LIAO -May 3, 2007: -- About 10 percent of truck drivers heading through Salem who were stopped during a police sweep tested positive for illegal drugs and prescription narcotics... Marijuana, meth and opiates were the top substances... State police released statistics Wednesday from Operation Trucker Check, which was conducted last month at the Woodburn Port of Entry... Additional state police and local law enforcement officers conducted random safety and drug testing for about 500 commercial trucks during a three-day period... About 500 truck drivers agreed to submit anonymous urine samples for the state police study. During the enforcement, police drug experts also looked for driver impairment. Three truck drivers were arrested on meth-related driving charges. Anonymous sampling allowed state police to collect a wider range of data, officials said... Among the drivers who tested positive, 18 were using marijuana, 16 were using opiates, which include substances such as heroin or the prescription pain reliever Vicodin, and eight were using amphetamines, found in meth... (Photo by THOMAS PATTERSON STATESMAN JOURNAL - State police conducted a check of about 500 truckers last month in Woodburn. Of the drivers who submitted anonymous urine samples, 9.65 percent tested positive for drugs)
Salem,OR,USA -The Statesman Journal, by RUTH LIAO -May 3, 2007: -- About 10 percent of truck drivers heading through Salem who were stopped during a police sweep tested positive for illegal drugs and prescription narcotics... Marijuana, meth and opiates were the top substances... State police released statistics Wednesday from Operation Trucker Check, which was conducted last month at the Woodburn Port of Entry... Additional state police and local law enforcement officers conducted random safety and drug testing for about 500 commercial trucks during a three-day period... About 500 truck drivers agreed to submit anonymous urine samples for the state police study. During the enforcement, police drug experts also looked for driver impairment. Three truck drivers were arrested on meth-related driving charges. Anonymous sampling allowed state police to collect a wider range of data, officials said... Among the drivers who tested positive, 18 were using marijuana, 16 were using opiates, which include substances such as heroin or the prescription pain reliever Vicodin, and eight were using amphetamines, found in meth... (Photo by THOMAS PATTERSON STATESMAN JOURNAL - State police conducted a check of about 500 truckers last month in Woodburn. Of the drivers who submitted anonymous urine samples, 9.65 percent tested positive for drugs)
Labels: drivers' health
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