How Medical Conditions Impact Driving

How efficient can the truck of the future be?  The answer to that is important for sure.  I mean the YouTube videos showing these new trucks are awesome.  That was worth the millions of tax payer dollars to watch.  Or spending 3 trillion dollars potentially on new infrastructure upgrades?  That’s important as well.  We need safe highways, bridges, rails and airlines.  Delaying the need for DOT medical exams for our professional drivers during the pandemic.  Very important, I guess.  Keeping drivers on the road is what was needed and still is to save the American economy.  I mean who would really understand it if we did not get our needed Amazon order, or the ability to purchase all the toilet paper we needed in the stores?  Not to mention the PPE needed by health care workers.  Thank a professional driver.

I was looking at the medical conditions, as identified by FMCSA, that impact professional drivers and was shocked.  I mean really thrown off my chair.  The reports generated by FMCSAs Medical Expert Panel (MEP) go as far back as 15 years ago.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the table below and see for yourself.  Are they on the DOT payroll?  How do I get this gig?   For as far back as 15 years in some cases, FMCSA has not updated research at all the comorbidities they highlighted way back when, nor have they updated the chronic diseases that groups like HTF have identified are currently plaguing the American Professional Driver.  Think about it, one of the chronic diseases not even addressed is Obesity.  The rates of obesity affecting the driver population are exceeding 55% and climbing.  1 out of 3 drivers are symptomatic to prediabetes.  Fatty Liver Disease is easy to detect from the Obesity Levels.  I mean seriously what are we doing with our Federal Dollars in this agency?  Oh, I know, we are spending it with manufacturers to design the truck of the future.  Sorry.

Here is a strange for instance many people don’t know and don’t even think about.  When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit the U.S. immediately every American citizen was told to stay indoors and social distance.  Schools shut down, public buildings, etc.  The country went indoors.  And rightly so.  But Professional Drivers had to continue to move all the necessary goods that we needed to ensure our survival.  Literally.  Drivers were heralded as the superheroes that saved our nation.  And again, rightfully so.  What they didn’t get.  What politicians, unions and special interest groups failed to do.  Make them a priority when administering the COVID-19 vaccination.  Our drivers couldn’t even get in front of teachers that won’t work.  The Professional Driver didn’t get Phase 1a classification.  They got put in line like the rest of us for the COVID vaccine.  The very men and women that delivered all the much needed PPE and the vaccine itself couldn’t even get vaccinated.  But they made sure you got yours, and on time.

Healthy Transportation Foundation calls on the Department of Transportation, the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration and Congress to put money aside to create “Healthier Highways”.  Our drivers, many of them uninsured, are in desperate need of Federal assistance through Health and Wellness Programs to create a safer environment for the American citizens.  These, through no fault of their own, unhealthy Captains of 70′ 80,000 pound vehicles travel our highways in adverse conditions.  They need our help.  And by the way, don’t forget to take a look at how important driver health is to the FMCSA in the reports below.  Well, at least it was 15 years ago.