TRUCKERS' HEALTH * USA - Fitness for duty plan would pull millions from road

“These drivers work hard; it’s not an easy life”

Grain Valley,MO,USA -Land Line Magazine, by Charlie Morasch -27 March 2009: -- More than 10,000 truck driving patients have gone through McElligott’s Professional Drivers Medical Depot clinics – a chain of truck stop-based medical clinics for truckers with offices mostly in the southern U.S... Dr. John McElligott said it’s not difficult to encounter drivers who have one or two borderline health issues – maybe a slight case of asthma, a borderline blood pressure, or a “heart gallop” noticed during one visit... McElligott’s view of treating driver health practically appears to fly in the face of a recently proposed fitness for duty matrix system recommended by the FMCSA Medical Review Board... The rule would require drivers who have either a condition or meet one of a long list of medical criteria to increase their DOT physicals or be barred from driving altogether... The matrix would punish drivers who exhibit more than one of the following conditions:
* diabetes (medicinally treated),
* cardiovascular disease,
* hypertension,
* disrhythmias,
* obstructive sleep apnea,
* a Body Mass Index of 35 or greater (A 5-foot-8 inch tall male weighing 230 pounds has a BMI of 35),
* opioid or benzodiazepine use,
* renal disease,
* pulmonary disease,
* epilepsy,
* musculoskeletal disease requiring medical surgical or prosthetic treatment,
* requirement for visual exemption (vision not meeting 20-40 after corrective lenses),
* major psychiatric illness, and
* “other conditions as identified by FMCSA.”
If there’s good news on the topic, it’s that truckers don’t have to comply with the recommendation – at least not yet. Because, right now, it is just a recommendation... Federal regulators don’t understand the stresses truck drivers are under, McElligott said, or the consequences of heaping on misguided regulations would have on small trucking companies... "If we’ve got a driver with a health problem, let’s educate him, get him treated but not let him lose his home, house and everything else because of a couple of doctor visits,” McElligott said. “I think they need to understand the consequences of these actions”... (P's.N.: And what about the motorist, in general ??? ... they don't would be controlled ??? Because on the roads they are most dangerous than truckers !!!)