Working conditions of commercial drivers: a scoping review of psychosocial work factors, health outcomes, and interventions
DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-20465-1
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Summary
This scoping review addresses the critical gap in understanding how psychosocial work factors influence the health and safety of commercial drivers, including truck, bus, taxi, and delivery drivers. Motivated by the high prevalence of road traffic crashes and the precarious working conditions that violate labor rights, the study aims to map existing evidence on psychosocial hazards, associated health outcomes, personal risk factors, and health promotion interventions. The authors highlight that previous reviews often focused narrowly on truck drivers, neglecting the broader commercial driving population and the specific vulnerabilities of groups such as female and immigrant drivers. The researchers conducted a comprehensive search across four main databases (PubMed, Central, JSTOR, and Dimensions AI) and additional sources like Google Scholar, covering literature from 1990 to 2023. Following the Arksey and O’Malley framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, the team screened 28,039 records, ultimately including 68 studies conducted in 32 countries. A team of twenty trained graduate researchers performed the screening and data extraction, which was reviewed by the authors to ensure consistency. The review employed thematic analysis to synthesize findings regarding job design, organizational conditions, work environments, health outcomes, and interventions. Consultations with a librarian, drivers, and occupational health experts helped contextualize the findings. The review identified that commercial drivers frequently operate under precarious conditions characterized by long driving hours, low job control, poor remuneration, work-family conflict, social isolation, and insufficient access to breaks and sanitation facilities. These psychosocial stressors are linked to severe health outcomes, including mental health issues (depression, anxiety, PTSD), cardiovascular diseases, chronic fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, and infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. Female drivers face additional challenges, including workplace abuse, sexual harassment, and limited access to supportive facilities. Personal risk factors such as obesity, smoking, poor diet, and lack of health insurance further exacerbate these health risks. Notably, the review found that most existing health promotion interventions focus on individual behavioral changes, such as diet and exercise, rather than addressing systemic working conditions. The authors conclude that improving the health and safety of commercial drivers requires a shift from individual-level interventions to structural changes in the road transport sector. Employers and policymakers must enforce occupational health and safety standards, improve job design, and ensure adequate social protection. The study emphasizes the need for interventions that target organizational factors, such as enforcing rest breaks and improving workplace support, to create a safer and healthier working environment. This review provides a foundational resource for developing targeted policies and future research, particularly in developing countries where evidence remains limited.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | OpenAlex-citations | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| archive | success | unpaywall | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-20 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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