The effective factors on the safety culture of HAZMAT drivers

Analyzing how safety culture influences the drivers’ behavior is extremely important from the public-health point of view. It allows experts and researchers to propose preventive measures based on a multidisciplinary approach. In this regard, several studies have investigated the importance of safety culture and its effect on traffic safety. However, only a few studies have evaluated this issue in the drivers of heavy vehicles which carry chemical hazardous materials (HAZMAT). Thus, the main objective of this research is to obtain the effective parameters affecting the safety culture of HAZMAT drivers. The ultimate goal is to determine the priority of parameters and weigh them to provide insights into the factors leading to accidents in this type of vehicle. To address this goal, 339 questionnaires were obtained from the drivers whose jobs were carrying this type of material; subsequently, the results of the survey were analyzed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The weights were calculated in order to define a global score for each of contributing factors. The results showed that the priorities of the predefined contributing factors are social, psychological, legislation and law enforcement, public education, and economic respectively. The first and second factors are human-related. In a conclusion, human-related factors, are the most important factors in safety culture. Therefore, to improve safety, focusing on human-related factors is essential.