An investigation of professional drivers: Organizational safety climate, driver behaviours and performance

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships among organizational safety climate, driver behaviours and performance for a total of 223 male Turkish professional drivers. The participants were asked to fill out the extended Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (i.e. errors, violations and positive behaviours), Driver Skills Inventory (i.e. safety skills and perceptual-motor skills), Transportation Companies' Climate Scale, which is newly and specially designed for the professional drivers for the first time, and a background information form. Results of the factor analyses conducted for Transportation Companies' Climate Scale yielded three factors, which were named as general safety management, specific practices and precautions and work and time pressure. After controlling for the effects of age and annual mileage, the results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed significant relationships between work and time pressure and frequencies of violations and errors. Hierarchical regression analyses also showed that general safety management was related to safety skills of professional drivers. Transportation companies' safety climate was not found to be related to positive driver behaviours or perceptual-motor skills. The results have both theoretical and practical implications by providing additional and new data to the related literature to be used for the future research and providing directions to the organizations in arrangement of safer work settings, respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.