Level of occupational stress, personality and traffic incidents: Comparative study of public and freight transport drivers

Abstract

Abstract The matter of road safety is particularly important in modern transport systems. This is due to the fact that despite the high level of technical sophistication of transport safety systems, the number of road incidents is relatively high. Generally speaking, transport safety is understood as control over various possible traffic hazards. Road conditions or vehicles damage is not the only source of threat in transport. Drivers and their personality traits affect the occurrence of risk situations and impediments while driving on public roads. Professional drivers should especially be characterized by their efficiency in controlling their reactions because they are responsible not only for transported goods but also for other people. Subjective assessment of drivers’ personality and the level of occupational stress may impact not only on their functioning but also the quality of driving and safe behaviors on the road. For this reason, studies determining the relationship between personality traits and stress in professional drivers are important. The authors of the article attempted to define these relations using surveys among public and freight transport drivers (N=150). They represented two transport companies from the Lublin City: Miejskie Przedsiebiorstwo Komunikacji (City Bus Company) and Poczta Polska (Polish Mail). Eysenck Impulsiveness-Venturesomeness-Empathy Questionnaire (Eysenck, 2006) and Questionnaire for Subjective Assessment of Work (Dudek et. al, 2004) were used in the study. Based on the above-mentioned questionnaires, statistical analyses were carried out using specialized statistical software SPSS Statistics, based on which the relationship between personality traits and the subjective assessment of occupational stress were determined. The results showed that there are statistically significant differences between research groups and there is a positive correlation between personality traits and work stress. Finally, there was also found the correlation between different types of traffic incidents.