EFFECTS OF DEFENSIVE DRIVING TRAINING IN A BUS COMPANY

The aim of the study was to determine the safety effects of defensive driving training intended for the drivers of heavy goods vehicles, and to obtain information for the further development of the training. All the drivers of a particular bus company took part in the defensive driving training. In order to determine the safety effects, the traffic accidents of the company were monitored for a four-year period, 1989-1990 (prior to the training) and 1991-1992 (after the training). In order to assess the general accident trend over the period of monitoring, the accidents of the company were compared with accidents involving buses in three city areas and in the country as the whole during the corresponding periods. The monitoring showed that the accidents of the bus company fell by 65% in the period after the training. Claims paid in respect of accidents fell by more than half a million Finnish marks. During the corresponding period accidents involving buses in the country as a whole declined by 27%. The bus accidents that occurred in the three city areas used as a control declined by 25% on average. When the downward trend occurring in bus accidents generally is taken into consideration in the results, there was still a decline of almost 40% in the accidents of the company under study. The accident risk for the company under study during the period following the training was 3.9 accidents per million km, whereas the corresponding ratio for buses in urban traffic in the country as a whole was 5.4 accidents per million km. An examination of the accidents classified by cause showed that the biggest decline occurred in sideways movements, then in rear-end collisions, reversing accidents and driving-off-the-road accidents. The biggest seasonal reductions in the accidents occurred in the winter and spring. A corresponding reduction was not observable in the bus accidents for the country as a whole over the monitoring period. A full month after the training the drivers were asked to assess the course. Three days, i.e. 20 hours, of training was regarded as a suitable length; as many as a third of the drivers thought that it could have been even longer. In particular there was a desire for more training on the practice circuit. 43% of the drivers assessed the training as being "excellent".

  • Availability:
  • Corporate Authors:

    Central Organization for Traffic Safety, Finland

    Sitratie 7
    FIN-00420 Helsinki,   Finland 
  • Authors:
    • LAHDENIEMI, E
  • Publication Date: 1995

Language

  • English

Media Info

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00721515
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
  • ISBN: 9515600316
  • Report/Paper Numbers: Liikenneturva 41/1995, HS-041 991
  • Files: HSL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
  • Created Date: May 23 1996 12:00AM