The subject of this thesis and the papers of which it is composed, is an analysis that has been carried out on the accidents of the bus drivers employed by a large bus company in the western part of the netherlands. It was assumed that the occurrence of a traffic-accident could contain information about possible effects of the task performance of a bus driver, and of the conditions of his task, on the performer. This accident study contains two parts. An initial explorative investigation of the accidents in one branch was followed by a second study of the accidents of another branch of the same bus company. In this second study the hypotheses derived from the results of the first part were tested. The topics of interest that are dealt with in this thesis are theoretical and practical problems of accident research, associations of accident risk with some personal factors such as age and experience, and with environmental (task-related) factors such as type of shift and time on task.
Abstract