Development of relationship between risk factors and road safety practices among bus drivers using structural model

Abstract

Most road safety research focuses on identifying the risk factors causing the accident for successful road safety practices implementation. What is missing from these studies is the relationship of how these so called risk factors affect safety practice behaviour statistically and empirically. Therefore, the objective of this research is to establish the relationships between risk factors (RF), traffic accident (TA) and driving behaviour (DB). Empirical data were collected from 465 responses from Malaysian commercial bus companies using a driver behaviour questionnaire (DBQ) designed for this purpose. In this study, all scales that were developed had an alpha (a) value greater than 0.70. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed using a principal component analysis with varimax as a method of extraction to determine the underlying dimensions of the risk factors and safety practices (KMO = 0.824). Preliminary analysis for model building from EFA provided evidence for five risk factor constructs (Driver, Task, Hazard, Vehicle, and Road) and two safety practice constructs (Traffic Accident and Driving Behaviour). Results from confirmatory factor analysis (GFI= 0.970; AGFI= 0.920; NNFI= 0.933; CFI=0.964; RMSEA= 0.072; CMIN= 1.778) provided additional support for the results obtained from EFA. The structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was employed to examine the relationship between these five risk factors and safety practices. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between these five risk factors, traffic accident and driving behaviour. This research has a practical value in which bus managers would be able to identify and relate the success of their safety practices through managing these associated risk factors.