Most Inspiring Jobs Question:

While the call of the open road and the solitude of the truck driver is something celebrated in country music, peace of mind and an endless stretch of scenery is not the only thing that comes with this interesting job that you can get without a degree. Despite many countries having strict laws requiring truckers to rest on their routes, pressure to make deliveries on time sometimes leads drivers to take the road without enough sleep. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation leads to serious impairment in tasks like driving. That same pressure to deliver also sometimes leads truckers to ignore speed limits, and when you are barreling down a highway in a gigantic machine weighing multiple tons, physics tells us that it requires a lot of energy for that machine to stop. Given that those trucks also are at risk for mechanical failures, and that they must contend with other drives on the road who do not understand what physics says about inertia, it is not surprising that road accidents are the main contributor to the danger of heading back on the road again for a truck driver.