Personal resilience, discipline and safety of military drivers

OBJECTIVES The research was aimed to examine associations between discipline violations, traffic violations, level of drivers' education, level of drivers' personal resilience and road accidents. We assumed that road accidents of military drivers that participated in this research will be related to their traffic violations as well as to their level of discipline. We further assumed that military drivers with low education will commit more discipline violations, more traffic violation and therefore will be involved in more road accidents. Method Drivers' records and crash data, usually collected as a routine by the army, were obtained from a unique linked database for 300 professional drivers in the Israeli military services enlisted in 2005 and 2006. The data related to drivers were randomly sampled from the data base. Our dependent variables were involvement in accidents and traffic offences while our independent variables were traffic offences, quality group (QG) and discipline offences as a measure for general behavior. Statistical analyzes were performed on the data in order to test the hypotheses. Results In the group of high QG drivers that committed more discipline offences were more probable to make an accident. However, for the low QG drivers this association has been found as mediated by traffic violations. On the whole, drivers with low QG were involved in more accidents. Conclusions The quality of a person in terms education, psychometric tests and personality tests (as defined by the army) is associated with more traffic accidents. Additionally, in the group of high quality, discipline offences are associated with more traffic accidents.