How to improve truck driver health, well-being and fitness

While it’s easy to monitor speeding, fuel and braking with a telematics system, it’s not so easy to track stress, fatigue and fitness. Yet factors related to truck driver health have a big impact. Truck driving is physically and mentally demanding work. Your team use dexterity, hand eye co-ordination and stamina to get the job done. And yet, the well-being of drivers is often seen as secondary.

The following statistics regarding diet, lifestyle and health show why this is a problem:

• 27% of drivers drink just 5-6 cups of water per day and 19% drink 4-5. The medically recommended minimum is 8.
• Truckers in the US are significantly more likely to suffer from obesity and diabetes than the national average.
• 60% of professional drivers in the UK eat and drink the majority of their food in their vehicles and 56% consider themselves overweight.
• 10% of drivers say they’ve quite a job because of stress and 25% say they have considered it.
• 1 in 10 people who drive a vehicle for work purposes admit they’ve fallen asleep behind the wheel
• 26% of truckers report feeling depressed and 14% report feeling anxiety
• 20% of accidents on major roadways are sleep related and 40% of sleep-related accidents involve commercial vehicles
• A mildly dehydrated driver will make twice as many errors

What can fleet managers do?

Read the full article on the lin below https://www.webfleet.com/en_gb/webfleet/blog/how-to-improve-truck-driver-health-well-being-and-fitness/