Commercial Driver Medical Examinations (CDL) and Issues of Obesity

From the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational & Environment Health (Drs Thiese and Hegmann), Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City; Arkansas Occupational Health Clinic (Dr Moffitt), Springdale; Center for Truck and Bus Safety (Dr Hanowski), Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, Blacksburg; Department of Environmental Health (Dr Kales), School of Public Health, Harvard, Cambridge, Mass; and Utah Traffic Lab (Dr Porter), Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Address correspondence to: Matthew S. Thiese, PhD, Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational & Environment Health, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Utah, 391 Chipeta Way, Ste C, Salt Lake City, UT 84108 (matt.thiese@hsc.utah.edu).

This research has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Utah.

This study has been funded, in part, by grants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH/CDC), 1K01OH009794, and NIOSH Education and Research Center training grant T42/CCT810426–10. The CDC/NIOSH is not involved in the study design, data analyses, or interpretation of the data.

The authors thank the contributions of numerous individuals, many of whom perform volunteer or only partially compensated work on this project. Additional sources of funding include the universities and other, noncommercial resources.

The authors have no relevant disclosures for this manuscript.

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Objective: The objective of this study was to assess relationships between body mass index (BMI) and comorbid conditions within a large sample of truck drivers.

Methods: Commercial driver medical examination data from 88,246 commercial drivers between 2005 and 2012 were analyzed for associations between BMI, medical disorders, and driver certification.

Results: Most drivers were obese (53.3%, BMI >30.0 kg/m²) and morbidly obese (26.6%, BMI >35.0 kg/m²), higher than prior reports. Obese drivers were less likely to be certified for 2 years and more likely to report heart disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, nervous disorders, sleep disorders, and chronic low back pain (all P < 0.0001). There are relationships between multiple potentially disqualifying conditions and increasing obesity (P < 0.0001). Morbid obesity prevalence increased 8.9% and prevalence of three or more multiple conditions increased fourfold between 2005 and 2012.

Conclusions: Obesity is related to multiple medical factors as well as increasing numbers of conditions that limit driving certification.