Your health whilst driving a HGV

Your health and HGV driving

As a driver of large goods vehicles, you should not be surprised if involved in a road traffic collision (RTC) your company insurer may ask if you have declared any medical conditions and if so whether you or your GP have declared this to the Driving Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).

Your company insurer will, in all cases, require sight of any medical declaration made by the driver when the completed accident report form and all relevant information are requested or submitted. In the case where no medical conditions are present, a signed declaration document must exist and be signed, dated by the driver confirming they do not have any medical conditions that would affect their ability to drive.

Astute transport operators have, in recent years, introduced medical declarations to be made by all their staff who drive company vehicles. This can be a simple form to declare whether you have a declarable health condition, what is the health condition, and any medication and dosage being taken. You may need to state whether you or your GP have declared the condition to DVLA.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

The results of all declarations can be inputted onto a spreadsheet, or database system and as is the case with all sensitive data, GDPR will apply to this sensitive data

Any personal data must be processed lawfully and in accordance with the six ‘Data Protection Principles. Data must:

1. be processed fairly, lawfully, and in a transparent way;
2. be collected and processed only for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes;
3. be limited to what is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed;
4. be accurate and kept up-to-date;
5. not be kept for longer than is necessary for its purposes; and
6. be processed securely and confidentially

Medical declarations

Medical declarations should be made during initial employment or during the individual's induction process when joining the company. The induction processes should not be restricted to initial employment, but revisited at sensible timeframes, for all drivers including medical declarations.

Medical fitness to drive concerns

Industry experts are asking questions about how medicals are conducted professionally when completed by an alternative doctor service when they do not have access to medical history and records. How do prove you have a legal right to drive a commercial vehicle when they do not have access to your records, maybe a medical contributor can explain to Transports Friend. Many General Practitioners state that only GPs should be able to complete a DVLA medical D4 form. We know in the current climate, it's almost impossible to get a GP appointment to conduct the necessary medical at a fee that is affordable..

Notifying DVLA

In the case of your car licence, you need to tell DVLA about some medical conditions as they can affect your driving.. You can be fined up to £1,000 if you do not tell DVLA about a medical condition that affects your driving.

You must give up your driving licence if any of the following are true:

1. your doctor tells you to stop driving for 3 months or more
2. your medical condition affects your ability to drive safely and lasts for 3 months or more
3. you do not meet the required standards for driving because of your medical condition

Check if your condition needs to be reported

If you have a car or motorcycle driving licence, you can either:

1. use the online service to check if your condition needs to be reported
2. check the A to Z list for your condition

You will then be told how to report your condition - this will be either on the online service or by printing off and sending a paper form to the DVLA.

If you have a bus, lorry or coach driving licence entitlement

You cannot use the online service to check for your condition or report it to DVLA.

1. Check the A to Z list for your condition and follow the link to find the form.
2. There are 340+ conditions that can be checked.

Source - DVLA