Occupational Risk Factors in Iranian Professional Drivers and their Impacts on Traffic Accidents

Abstract

In many countries road crashes are the main cause of fatal accidents related to job. The aim of our study was to characterize a population of Iranian professional drivers with regard to history of drivers’ road crash incidents and some occupational factors. Using Swedish version of the Nordic Questionnaire information about musculoskeletal pain prevalence in last 12 months, demographic features, smoking habits, age, job experience, road crash, job consent, self-perceived job stress, working load and fatigue were obtained from 403 drivers. Ninety seven (25%) of the study population reported having one or more traffic accident during their driving job history. The association between self-report incident of road crash and driving duration, smoking, lack of exercise, fatigue, lack of health education and musculoskeletal complaints were statistically significant(p<0.05). Data analysis also revealed positive significant association between fatigue as dependent variable and driving duration, self perceived stress and lack of job consent as independent variables (p<0.01). The questionnaire data indicated that signs of fatigue in smoker drivers, old drivers (>50 years), high experienced drivers (>10 years), drivers without sport activities, night drivers, fat and over weighted drivers, old vehicle drivers (age of vehicle >10 years), bus and truck drivers were more than other groups of professional drivers but the differences were not significant. It can be said that occupational risk factors influence the safe operation of drivers. However, prevention strategies such as organizational changes for reducing work-related stress, recording and analysis of road incidents ، national health and safety law for drivers are needed.