Truck driving identified as Australia’s most deadly occupation

A confronting report released by Safe Work Australia late last month shows that in the 10 years to 2023, more truck drivers have died from work-related injuries than any other occupation in the country.

Sadly, for many truck drivers who face a raft of dangers out on the highways on the daily, these results won’t come as that much of a surprise. Although the actual numbers are eye-opening.

In the 10-year period covered in the report, tragically, 430 truck drivers died while at work – that’s 430 truck drivers who left for work and never came home. Of that number, 322 fatalities resulted from vehicle incidents. Other fatalities were linked to duties such as vehicle maintenance, loading and inspection of equipment.

That figure is almost four times the number of the second most dangerous occupation identified in the report – livestock farmers, where 118 lives were lost.

Truck drivers make up 23 per cent of work-related injury fatalities across all occupations from the 10 years to 2023.

Disturbingly, truck drivers are experiencing a fatality frequency rate of 22.6 fatalities per 100,000 workers.

The report further breaks down the number of truck drivers employed and various demographics. In 2021, the report cites that there were 161,500 people employed as truck drivers in Australia, with over half of that number aged over 45.

“Truck drivers are consistently identified as the most at-risk occupation group in Australia, with drivers experiencing the highest rate of work-related injuries and fatalities over the last decade,” Safe Work Australia said in its report.

“The nature of the work and its demands – long hours on the road, exposure to unpredictable environments, heavy vehicle operation, manual handling of heavy cargo and freight, as well as time pressures – all contribute significantly to the physical and psychosocial risk profile for this workforce.

“Exacerbating these issues, research from Jobs and Skills Australia shows that there is a shortage of truck drivers in all states and territories except Victoria.”

Adding to these worrying figures, the report pointed to Safe Work Australia’s National Data Set for Compensation-based statistics (NDS), which show that over the 10-year period, truck drivers consistently experienced a higher frequency rate of serious claims, particularly those relating to ‘Body stressing’ and ‘Falls, trips and slips of a person.’

“The median compensation paid and time lost for these serious claims has been steadily increasing throughout each year during this period, indicating that the incidence and severity of the injuries suffered by truck drivers are getting worse,” the report said.

“Truck drivers are also more often exposed to body positioning hazards like ‘Spending time sitting down’ and ‘Exposed to whole body vibration’ when compared to all other occupations.”

According to CEO of the Western Roads Federation, Cam Dumesny, poor roads and poor driver training standards are just some of the issues that are exacerbating the dangers truckies are faced with. “There’s a chronic underinvestment by local, state and federal governments on regional roads. The aggressive and risk-taking attitudes of other vehicle drivers around trucks is out of hand. And nothing is being done to address that. It seems the mainstream media are just happy to blame truck drivers.

“There’s also the general shortage of drivers and issues with poor driver training standards. We need to stop this rubbish where you can go in at 8am and come out by midday with a rigid licence. If we want truck driving to be regarded as a profession, our training standards must start treating it like one. It’s not just about driving, there are all those other skills drivers need to have that aren’t in the book.

“While there’s no magic bullet to resolve all of this, there’s also no plan for how we’re going to address these issues – and we saw that all play out recently with the “magic bullet” idea to reduce regional speed limits instead of just fixing the roads.”