Truckers’ Accident Risk Reduced by Sleep Apnea Treatment

Sleep apnea is very common among truckers, and, unfortunately, very dangerous. Truck drivers who have sleep apnea are five times more likely to be involved in an accident than those without sleep apnea. To help combat this risk, regulators have proposed sleep apnea screening and treatment requirements for truck drivers similar to commuter rail drivers.

Now new research suggests that these measures might be very successful, because sleep apnea treatment reduces drivers’ risks to the level of drivers without sleep apnea.

This study looked at 238 Italian truck drivers of dangerous goods (TDDGs). TDDG is a European designation for drivers that drive hazardous cargoes that are inflammable or toxic, such as gasoline or methane. They are subject to additional regulations, as similar drivers are in the US.

None of the drivers reported symptoms of sleep apnea, but when given a sleep test to diagnose sleep apnea, it was found that 100 of the drivers (35.7%) were sleep apneics. This is a little higher than most of the estimates for the general trucker population in the US.

Only the 24 drivers with severe sleep apnea (10%) were assigned to receive sleep apnea treatment in the form of CPAP.

At the beginning of the study, researchers looked at reports of past accidents and near misses for these drivers. They found that the drivers with severe sleep apnea were 4.75 times more likely to have accidents than their coworkers who didn’t have sleep apnea.

Drivers underwent CPAP treatment, with all 24 prescribed drivers maintaining the minimum treatment protocol of four hours a night for five nights a week for the study period of two years. When researchers reviewed the crash reports for the two years of the study, they found that truck drivers who had been treated had a near-miss accident rate comparable to drivers without sleep apnea. With only two accidents, there was not enough data to make statistical conclusions about the impact on accidents.