Driver Behaviour Inventory as Predictors of Driving Crashes and Near Misses among Professional Drivers: Testing a Contextual Mediated Model

Abstract

The adjusted version of Driver Behaviour Inventory devised by Kontogiannis (2006) based on previous research (Mathews et al., 1999) was used as a measure of stress in this study. Three hundred and twenty two male professional bus (n = 36) and lorry (n = 286) drivers aged between 20 and 61years (mean = 37.96, SD = 8.19 years) participated in the study. The varimax extractions through PCA summarised all the original five factors. A contextual mediated model was proposed to distinguished the distal (demographic and traffic related variables) and proximal (aberrant driving behaviours) factors in predicting near misses and accidents. Examination of the structural path parameters through SPSS-AMOS v 22.0 revealed that five out of sixteen possible paths from the distal context to proximal context were significant and also five out of eight possible paths from the proximal context to the outcomes were significant.The level of driving confidence and general overtaking decreased as drivers became older. Similarly, drivers’ driving confidence level decreased as their driving distance increased. As expected, driving confidence and general overtaking level increased as their years of driving experience increased. Occurrences of near misses were positively predicted by driving confidence, general overtaking and dislike of driving. Also, occurrences of major accidents increased with an increased in the level of driving confidence and dislike of driving. Age, experience and mileage indirectly predicted both near misses and accidents via driving confidence. Also, age, experience and mileage indirectly predicted near misses via general overtaking, but did not necessarily predict accidents.