Truck driving is one of the most dangerous occupations in the country, making up 20% of all vehicle related-fatalities.
Driving in and of itself is dangerous. Add on long shifts, the large size and weight of a vehicle and it is one of the riskiest civilian jobs. In Ohio alone, more than 2,000 large truck crashes resulted in fatalities or injuries last year, according to data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
But, Walt Ryley, an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University, believes there’s another factor making the work risky: low trucker compensation. He suggests there’s a direct link between driver pay and safety.
“Safety is sort of thought of as the last person to touch the wheel, the vehicle, the human factor, which is important,” Ryley said. “But, there's far less being discussed about compensation.”
Unpaid labor
Ohio is a top employer of heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in the country. The nearly 90,000 Ohio truckers are paid on average $26 dollars an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But, Ryley says, these truckers aren’t explicitly paid for all of their work. Most truckers are paid at a piece rate – meaning they get paid per mile, per load or per ton. That means the majority of drivers are not compensated for sitting in traffic or tasks like loading their truck.
“That's time off the clock and time that they will have a hard time recovering,” Ryley said. “They’re limited in the amount of hours they can drive in a day. They're limited in the amount of hours that they can work in a week. And they have very tight delivery schedules.”
This pay model incentives drivers to take more risks, Ryley said. If a trucker is held up in traffic, they may be more tempted to speed to make up for lost time.
“How do you drive when you’re in a hurry? There’s incentives to drive faster, drive more aggressively, which is the exact opposite thing that you want a truck driver to do,” he explained.
Need for more research
Despite this connection, Ryley says government regulatory agencies haven’t paid much attention to the intersection between economics and safety.
That’s why Ryley is working to come up with alternative pay models that can compensate drivers for all their labor and still keep trucking businesses profitable. He said, right now, the margins are pretty low for trucking companies, and it’s difficult to get a return on investment in safety.
“How do you help carriers differentiate their product and their brand in such a way that safety is central?” he asked. “That’s really hard to answer.”
But, he argues, it’s important to try. The research would be not just a benefit to truckers delivering goods across the country, but would also benefit the safety of all Ohioans.
“It's usually the other vehicle, other road user, that bears the brunt of the damage in [large truck] collisions,” Ryley said.
