ROAD SAFETY IMPROVEMENT IN LARGE COMPANIES - AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT MEASURES

Road accidents among professional drivers are a major problem in many companies. There are several traditional measures for improving safety , but knowledge about what measures are most effective is rather limit ed. The aim of the study is to compare four different measures for red ucing accident involvement through changed driver behaviour. The measu res are driver training, group discussions, campaigns and bonuses for accident free driving. Five groups of approximately 900 drivers each e mployed by the Swedish telephone company ''Televerket'' have been used in the experiment. Four of the groups were test groups, where each to ok part in one of the measures. The fifth group was a control group. T he effect on accident risk (accidents in relation to mileage) and acci dent costs have been calculated for a period of 2 years after the meas ures were applied. The results show that group discussions and driver training with the rather unusual design used in the experiment succeed ed in improving the accident risk compared to the control group. Accid ent costs were reduced in all four test groups, but not in the control group. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd