A Survey of the Relationship between the Mental Workload and Cognitive Failure in Taxi Drivers, 2017

Background: The mental workload and cognitive failures are among the factors affecting the human behavior, performance and efficiency, which are both effective on the human error and accidents of the drivers. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between cognitive failure and mental workload of taxi drivers in Shiraz. Methods: This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 taxi drivers in Shiraz in 2017. In order to measure the mental workload and cognitive failure, NASA-TLX mental workload questionnaire and CFQ cognitive failure questionnaire were used, respectively. Finally, statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 21. Pearson correlation, T-test and one-way ANOVA tests were used to analyze the data statistically. Results: The taxi drivers’ mental workload was reported relatively high in this study and the results showed that a significant relationship was found between mental and temporal workload and nominal memory error of drivers at 5% error level (P<0.05). Also, a significant relationship was observed between temporal pressure and performance and memory and attention, respectively (P<0.05). In general, a significant relationship was observed between total cognitive failure and total mental workload (P<0.05). Also, demographic factors as age had a significant effect on both mental workload and cognitive failure (P<0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study showed a significant relationship between the mental workload and cognitive failure, so that with increasing the mental workload, cognitive failure of taxi drivers also increased and the probability of the human error and consequently driving accidents increased. Therefore, reducing the mental workload with providing ergonomic solutions can greatly prevent the human error in driving as a major contributor to many accidents.