Female Truckers More Likely to Comply with Safety Regulations
UT Research Finds
Women are significantly more likely to comply with safety regulations in the male-dominated commercial trucking industry according to a new study co-authored by Alex Scott, Gerald T. Niedert Professor of Supply Chain Management.
Male Truckers More Likely to Commit Major Safety Violations
Using data from 22 million inspections between 2010 and 2022, the researchers identified an operational safety compliance gap between men and women truckers. Their results showed that men were 7.4 percent more likely to be cited for a major violation of rules governing working hours (hours-of-service [HOS] rules) and 13.2 percent more likely to have received a major unsafe driving violation.
“If you’re driving 15 miles over the speed limit, it’s hard for that to be on accident,” Scott explains. If you’re driving 15 hours in a day when you’re only supposed to be driving 11, that’s not an accident. Throughout the entire sample, men were significantly more likely to engage in unsafe driving behaviors, which have been most correlated with vehicle accidents.”
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Transportation mandated electronic logging devices (ELDs) for all commercial motor vehicles by December 2019. ELDs automatically record driving hours to enhance safety and simplify HOS tracking. The research revealed that men’s compliance increased after the ELDs mandate, closing the HOS safety gap, but not eradicating the safety difference entirely.
“It’s hard to cheat the ELDs,” Scott says. “Once you make compliance almost perfunctory, then the gap between men and women disappeared for HOS. However, even after those were implemented, the unsafe driving gap stayed the same.”
Attracting More Women to the Industry
In 2021 alone, 5,149 commercial trucks were involved in fatal crashes, 10,000 trucks were involved in crashes that led to injuries, and 379,000 trucks were involved in incidents that involved property damage. Since most truckers are male, the vast majority of these accidents involved male drivers.
“If women have higher compliance that results in lower safety violations, then perhaps more women in the industry could reduce the number of accidents by truckers,” Scott says.
Efforts to attract and retain women truckers are ongoing. Over the summer, the American Transportation Research Institute highlighted strategies for recruiting women drivers. In 2022, the Secretary of Transportation established the Women of Trucking Advisory Board to support, recruit, and ensure the safety of women drivers and strengthen the industry.
Uniqueness of Trucking, More Blue-Collar Areas to Study
Scott and his co-researchers describe trucking as unique compared to many blue-collar occupations. Truckers have significant autonomy, while workers in other industries have managers overseeing them. They also suggest the trucking industry’s culture has a strong anti-authority element. In industries without these elements, the gender safety and compliance gap may be smaller or nonexistent. However, Scott suggests researching other blue-collar industries for gaps, like the male-dominated construction industry.
“Who knows if there are higher compliance rates in construction for women than men?” Scott says. “The broader point is that blue-collar industries as a whole are male dominated. But, as more women come into those fields, maybe that could transform those fields in some way, like higher compliance with safety rules.”
—Scott McNutt
“Men at Work…Unsafely: Gender Differences in Compliance with Safety Regulations in the Trucking Industry,” by Alex Scott, Beth Davis-Sramek (Auburn), and David J Ketchen, Jr. (Auburn), appeared in Production and Operations Management, 2024, Vol. 33(4).
