Measurement of company car drivers' aberrant behaviors, safety attitudes, and safety climate perceptions

Company car drivers are at a higher risk of being involved in a crash compared with the general driving population. A 34-item questionnaire was used to study the responses of 110 company car drivers to questions regarding their aberrant behaviors, safety attitudes, and safety climate perceptions. The author evaluated the questionnaire's psychometric properties (factor structure and reliability) and investigated how company car drivers could be classified into subgroups on the basis of their reported behaviors, attitudes, and safety climate perceptions. An exploratory factor analysis yielded six factors: traffic violations, attitudes toward speeding and alcohol use, law enforcement, driver ability, work pressure, and management commitment to safety. With the K-means procedure, three subgroups were identified. One subgroup reports positive attitudes across all factors. The other two subgroups share higher rates of involvement in traffic violations and riskier attitudes toward speeding and alcohol use, but the two subgroups differ in their road safety attitudes as well as in their safety climate perceptions. An understanding of the characteristics of the different subgroups of company car drivers can help inform safety countermeasures. In addition, the questionnaire may serve as a practical tool for researchers and safety officers because it covers multiple safety-related factors but remains relatively brief.