Predicting health outcomes and safety behaviour in taxi drivers

Hazards have been a major cause of concern in the taxi industry and management has been actively involved in trying to reduce the hazards faced by taxi drivers. However, there has not been sufficient emphasis placed on the physical health and emotional wellbeing of drivers. This research project integrates the various factors that influence the safety behaviour, physical health and emotional wellbeing of taxi drivers into a theoretical model that shows hazards, perceptions of risk-taking, aggression, and drivers' perceptions of management's commitment to health and safety as directly influencing physical health, emotional well-being, and safety behaviour of taxi drivers. Three separate multiple regressions were conducted and the results indicated that the amount of hazards taxi drivers encountered did contribute to the prediction of their physical and emotional wellbeing but not to safety behaviour. Hazards were the strongest predictor of the amount of physical symptoms of ill health that drivers reported, while the individual factors (perceptions of risk-taking and aggression) were the strongest predictors of emotional wellbeing and safety behaviour. It is recommended that the industry would benefit from future research that takes a similar integrative approach to include other factors that may be important in predicting taxi driver health and safety