Assessment and prediction of whole-body vibration exposure in transport truck drivers.

The European Directive 2002/44/EC on the minimum Health and Safety prescriptions regarding the exposure of workers to vibrations, was implemented in Italy through the Legislative Decree 187/2005, recently amended by the Legislative Decree 81/2008. The Decrees contain legal obligations and minimum requirements for the evaluation by direct measurement, which is the reference method, although not always appropriate or necessary, and by means of vibration data banks or information provided by equipment manufacturers. The values assessed must be representative of the actual working environment: in order to adapt assessed values to real working conditions it may be useful to adopt some statistical models. Statistically significant relationships were observed by means of a multiple linear regression on a limited set of measures on different models of trucks, in different operating conditions and settings: the relative influence of predictor variables was then assessed. Finally a short digression about the evolution of the suspension fitting has been made in order to briefly describe the historical context of WBV exposure level reduction and the state of the art of industrial vehicle comfort improvement technologies.