NB: Please do not use without reference to authors ‘Bus-ting ’ a gut – the strains of an urban bus driver

The profession of urban bus driving has been widely shown to be a challenging one in terms of psychosocial risk and health outcomes. This research project considers sources of occupational strain in a sample of British bus drivers. Adopting the influential models of the Job Demand/Control and Effort-Reward Imbalance, a questionnaire survey was completed by a number of drivers from several bus operating depots. The questionnaire battery consisted of measures of job strain, job specific stressors, psychological health, and physical health. High job strain bus drivers were compared to low/no strain bus drivers and significant differences were found in terms of organisational outcomes: (a) accident rates, (b) work absenteeism (c) intention to quit, (d) service level quality, as well as (e) personal health habits. Furthermore, a series of multiple regressions were conducted to examine the predictive qualities of a number of predictors on the criterion variables of psychological and physical health. This study is the first phase of a project looking at the impact of occupational strain on performance and safety in bus drivers