Analysis of Factors Affecting The Traffic Safety Level of Taxi Company: Focused on Driver’s Work and Welfare Environments

Abstract

Unlike existing studies dealing with factors affecting crash occurrences, this study attempted to analyze underlying factors related to driver’s human factors. In general, it is known that human factors leading to the crash occurrence include drowsiness, aggressiveness, and inattention etc. This study mainly focused on underlying factors resulting in such human factors that have been widely addressed to date in the area of traffic safety. Crash investigation systems focus on the road geometry, road environment factor and the driver’s risk driving behavior, human factor. However, less efforts have been made in collecting data related to internal factors of crashes that affect driving behavior. For example, the internal factors include taxi driver’s health characteristics, living conditions and taxi company’s working environment. The purpose of this study is to derive the factors of taxi company’s safety level and to propose a new direction for taxi safety consulting. In-depth interviews with commercial taxi drivers and managers of taxi companies were conducted to collect survey data to represent internal factors associated with driver’s working and welfare environments. In addition to a multiple linear regression, a binomial logistic regression and a random forest analysis technique were adopted to derive underlying internal factors to be used to identify the level of traffic safety taxi companies. The results show that the identified contributing factors include weekly working hours, accident-involved vehicle management, privately-used hour, narrow space inside the vehicle, fatigue management, and the level of life satisfaction. The countermeasures for enhancing taxi safety were discussed in terms of improving working environment and welfare of taxi drivers.