Ways Employers Can Keep their Truck Drivers Safe
2 Mar 2016For employers to keep their truck drivers safe, they require their truckers to be alert, experienced, buckled-up, drive a reliable company vehicle, and practice safe driving habits. They also need to implement strong employer safety programs.
There are over 2.5 million truck drivers that drive large trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And about 65 percent of US truck driver on-the-job deaths were due to vehicle accidents in 2012. During their career, more than one in three employee truck drivers experience a severe truck accident and one in eight has experienced a couple or more.
Having your drivers buckle their seat belts is not only required by federal regulations, it is effective. However, it was found in 2013 that one in six truck drivers do not wear their seat belts and as much as 40 percent of truck driver deaths could have been prevented simply by buckling up.
According to a NIOSH survey, unrealistic deadlines could lead to risky behaviors and put truck drivers at a high risk of injury. The 2010 survey was conducted at 32 truck stops in the US and there were over 1200 participating long-haul truck drivers. Out of these drivers, almost 75 percent thought they had too tight delivery schedules which were thought by NIOSH to lead them to be unsafe.
How Employers Can Encourage Truck Driver Safety
It is not only up to the truck drivers to ensure their own safety. Employers have a responsibility too. Some ways employers can keep their truck drivers safe while driving include:
- Making the commitment to driver safety programs.
- Establishing policies for driver safety and enforcing them.
- Requiring truck drivers to buckle up.
- Putting seat belt programs in place and involving the drivers in decisions.
- Promoting the use of seat belts in safety meetings and trainings.
- Going over factors that lead to crashes like distracted driving and drowsiness in their driver safety programs.
- Monitoring the driver’s speed, rapid acceleration, hard braking and other driving behaviors through GPS fleet tracking.
The NIOSH survey highlights various essential safety issues for further interventions and research (i.e. injury underreporting, high occurrence of truck crashes, noncompliance with hours-of-service rules, unrealistically tight delivery schedules and inadequate entry-level training).
Employers are recommended by the NIOSH to make sure that their expectations for on-time deliveries don’t result in hours-of-service violations, ensure the training that entry-level drivers get meets their needs and educate drivers on safe driving behavior.
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