Women are significantly more likely to comply with safety regulations in the commercial trucking business, an industry dominated by men, according to a new study co-authored by Alex Scott, associate professor of supply chain management and the Gerald T. Niedert Professor in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business.
Male Truckers More Likely to Commit Major Safety Violations
Using data from 22 million truck inspections between 2010 to 2022, Scott and his co-researchers identified an operational safety compliance gap between men and women truckers. The researchers found little difference between men and women on minor violations, such as completing paperwork incorrectly or driving on tires slightly low in air pressure. However, their results showed that men were 7.4 percent more likely to be cited for a major violation of rules governing working hours (known as hours-of-service, or HOS, rules) and 13.2 percent more likely to have received a major unsafe driving violation.
“Completing paperwork incorrectly might be an accident, right?” Scott explains. “But for major violations, most of it is intentional. If you’re driving 15 miles over the speed limit, it’s hard for that to be on accident. 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 required electronic logging devices (ELDs) to be installed in commercial motor vehicles by December 2019. ELDs automatically record driving hours to improve driver safety and make it easier to track and manage HOS records. The research revealed that after ELDs were mandated, men’s compliance increased, closing the safety gap — but not completely.
“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 their article on trucking safety, the researchers noted that the trucking industry has been chronically short of drivers for years, and 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 must involve male drivers.
“If women have higher compliance and that results in lower safety violations, then perhaps more women in the industry could reduce the number of accidents by truckers,” Scott says.
The trucking industry has had little success in attracting and retaining women truckers, but efforts are ongoing. Over the summer, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released new research identifying approaches to attract women truck drivers. The federal government is also looking at ways to recruit women into trucking. In 2022, the Secretary of Transportation created the Women of Trucking Advisory Board (WOTAB) within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. WOTAB’s charter is “to recruit, retain, support and ensure the safety of women commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers and strengthen the trucking industry as a whole.”
Uniqueness of Trucking, More Blue-Collar Areas to Study
Scott and his co-researchers also describe trucking as unique in comparison with many blue-collar occupations. Truckers have significant autonomy, operating without direct supervision, 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 gap between genders in safety regulation compliance may be smaller or nonexistent. However, Scott suggests researching other blue-collar industries for such gaps is worthwhile.
“Construction is another very male dominated industry. I’m not an expert on construction, but there must be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of accidents every year in it,” Scott says. “Who knows if there are higher compliance rates in construction for women than men? 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. That could potentially improve safety in many different industries.”
“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).