Keep on Trucking -- Safely

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — When 30 tons of big rig come barreling down the road, drivers in the path want to be assured that everything has been done to maximize safety and minimize the likelihood of a crash. To do this, researchers at the University of Arkansas recommend that trucking companies and transportation policymakers take a holistic approach to truck safety, and they have suggestions for where to start.

“While focusing on the 'human factor’ and its role in traffic crashes, it is important that we use a holistic approach, which advocates a systems approach of reducing traffic crashes among truck drivers,” the researchers recommend in a forthcoming article in Performance Improvement Quarterly.

Fredrick Muyia Nafukho, Barbara E. Hinton and Carroll M. Graham found that there has been only limited research on the performance of tractor trailer drivers and the reduction of road traffic crashes. To learn more about the factors involved in truck drivers’ job performance, they examined a year’s worth of data for 14,340 drivers employed by a major trucking company. They found that a majority of the drivers in the study — 80.73 percent — had good performance records.

In part, research results support current efforts of the U.S. Department of Transportation to allow more driving time per day while limiting total on-duty time. The UA study found that when drivers’ average miles driven per month are lower, the number of crashes per driver is reduced.

Nafukho and colleagues recommend further study aimed at determining the effect of the new government regulations on driver performance as measured by a reduction in traffic crashes. In addition to using statistical data, they suggest that further studies include in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with truck drivers to learn what they think could make them more efficient and effective in their work.

They also advocate an approach that goes beyond the experience of the drivers to look at broader factors.

“To focus on truck drivers alone to improve drivers’ performance and increased revenue for the transportation company would be misleading,” the researchers concluded. “The drivers operate at the individual level. But critical to the success of any organization are the individual, process, and organizational performance levels.”

A holistic approach would involve “identification of traffic problems, formulation of a national strategy to address the problems and setting of targets and performance monitoring mechanisms,” according to Nafukho, Hinton and Graham.

The research results also supported results of a 2002 study that suggested driver pay has a strong and positive effect on driver performance. The researchers noted that these results and the proposed federal policy “raise a challenge to transportation companies,” since drivers are currently paid based on miles driven.

An unexplained factor related to crashes was the age of the driver. While the average age for all the drivers in the study was 45.56, the average age for the drivers involved in crashes was 46.30 years. The researchers cautioned that their study was limited to the information available in the database and identified several other factors that should be studied to get a fuller picture. Future research would benefit from information about the time the accident occurred, the condition of the roads, the quality and type of road, distractions and intersections, to name a few factors.

Nafukho is associate professor and assistant head of the department of rehabilitation, human resources and communication disorders in the UA College of Education and Health Professions. Hinton is a professor and the college’s associate dean for academic affairs. Graham is a visiting professor in the department.