ABSTRACT
The number of fatalities by traffic accidents has been decreased about half during the last two decades in Japan, i.e., 9,211 and 5,155 persons in 1988 and 2008, respectively (ITARDA, 2008). In terms of the fatal accidents per 10,000 motor vehicles, commercial vehicles have caused accidents three times higher than private automobiles for the last ten years (IATSS, 2010). It is also suggested that ordinary drivers (non-professional drivers) seem to view truck presence on the road as a source of potential danger and it causes other drivers to have a more responsible attitude toward driving (Rosenbloom, 2009). Therefore, it is of critical importance to tackle with uncovering safety climate as well as safety attitudes of professional truck drivers to achieve higher level of traffic safety. There has been a great number of studies to investigate or measure safety culture or climate in various domains of human-machine operation domains such as aviation (e.g., Helmreich and Merritt, 1998) ship handling (Itoh and Andersen, 1999) and railways (Itoh et aI., 2003), and health care (Hoh et aI., 2006). However, only a few studies have systematically explored safety culture/climate in truck transportation.
