Safety Climate of Commercial Vehicle Operation

Enhancing the safety culture within trucking and motor coach industries has become a key area of concern given the potential impact it has on crashes and overall safety. Many organizations recognize that safety is compromised if the culture within their organization does not promote safety. Unfortunately, the specifics of a good safety culture and the methods by which safety culture is fostered are relatively ambiguous. A key reason for this is the general lack of standardization of the highly qualitative term 'safety climate' within the trucking and motor coach industries. A survey was completed by 31 organizations within these industries as part of a Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis No. 14. The results provide some insights into the safety beliefs and attitudes of these drivers and the organizational needs to maintain a stable workforce and positive safety climate. The report provides descriptions of the data collected but lack any derived inferences that can help shape the safety culture. The results of this research project are the development of a set of key factors that capture the essence of a safety climate within the truck and busing industries. This is achieved through factor analysis of the existing survey data that has been made available to the principal investigator. The result reveals a four factor model that is grouped based on the overall safety culture in the industry, the financial impact, internal awareness, and demand for safety. This outcome suggests that there are both internal and external factors that may affect a safety manager's perception of safety and the safety climate within an organization, and provides insights for the trucking industry to communicate a safety culture to their employees. This, thereby, translates into a stable workforce, and reduces truck crashes. Future studies may need to consider how to both create and maintain a climate of safety.

[1]  Ann Williamson,et al.  The development of a measure of safety climate: The role of safety perceptions and attitudes , 1997 .

[2]  Rhona Flin,et al.  Safety Condition Monitoring: Lessons from Man‐Made Disasters , 1998 .

[3]  M. Crum,et al.  Management practices as antecedents of safety culture within the trucking industry: similarities and differences by hierarchical level. , 2003, Journal of safety research.

[4]  Sam Kash Kachigan Multivariate statistical analysis: A conceptual introduction , 1982 .

[5]  Michael H. Belzer,et al.  Pay Incentives and Truck Driver Safety: A Case Study , 2006 .

[6]  D. Zohar Safety climate in industrial organizations: theoretical and applied implications. , 1980, The Journal of applied psychology.

[7]  R Beilock,et al.  Long Hours and Fatigue: A Survey of Tractor-Trailer Drivers , 1992, Journal of public health policy.

[8]  Kent Jacob Nielsen,et al.  Changes in safety climate and accidents at two identical manufacturing plants , 2008 .

[9]  A. Neal,et al.  The impact of organizational climate on safety climate and individual behavior , 2000 .

[10]  D M Gaba,et al.  The culture of safety: results of an organization-wide survey in 15 California hospitals , 2003, Quality & safety in health care.

[11]  Charleston C. Wang OSHA Compliance and Management Handbook , 1993 .

[12]  Herbert C Biggs,et al.  Comparing safety climate factors as predictors of work-related driving behavior. , 2006, Journal of safety research.

[13]  Brian Everitt,et al.  A Handbook of Statistical Analyses Using SAS , 1996 .

[14]  Torbjørn Rundmo,et al.  A longitudinal study of safety climate on the Norwegian continental shelf. , 2008 .

[15]  Tsung-Chih Wu,et al.  A correlation among safety leadership, safety climate and safety performance , 2008 .

[16]  Rosa Isla Díaz,et al.  Safety climate and attitude as evaluation measures of organizational safety. , 1997 .

[17]  Tzuoo-Ding Lin,et al.  TIME OF DAY MODELS OF MOTOR CARRIER ACCIDENT RISK , 1994 .

[18]  Geoffrey R. Norman,et al.  Deriving the factor structure of safety climate scales. , 2009 .

[19]  Stephen E. Johnson,et al.  The predictive validity of safety climate. , 2007, Journal of safety research.

[20]  Kathryn Mearns,et al.  Measuring safety climate: identifying the common features☆ , 2000 .

[21]  C. Alderfer An empirical test of a new theory of human needs , 1969 .

[22]  Richard J Hanowski,et al.  An on-road study to investigate fatigue in local/short haul trucking. , 2003, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[23]  Elisa R. Braver,et al.  HOW LONG-HAUL MOTOR CARRIERS DETERMINE TRUCK DRIVER WORK SCHEDULES: THE ROLE OF SHIPPER DEMANDS , 1999 .

[24]  Frank W. Guldenmund,et al.  The use of questionnaires in safety culture research – an evaluation , 2007 .

[25]  F. Guldenmund The nature of safety culture: a review of theory and research , 2000 .

[26]  S. Clarke Perceptions of organizational safety: implications for the development of safety culture , 1999 .

[27]  Ted R. Miller,et al.  Unit Costs of Medium and Heavy Truck Crashes , 2007 .