Personal traits and ...

The study examined the relationship between risk perception and driver’ characteristics among haulage companies’ drivers in River State, Nigeria. A total of 210 copies of questionnaire was administered among 20 haulage companies and the retrieved questionnaire were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequency counts, percentage and spearman rank. On the drivers’ characteristics, the outcome showed that respondents driving haulage vehicles in the last 6-10years (62.9%), driving 13-16hrs (67.6%) in one trip (86.2%). From the analysis, it was revealed that majority of the respondents disagreed with various risk perceptions such as skills required for handling haulage vehicle is not different to that of other vehicles (91.9%) and anyone with driving experience can handle haulage vehicle (86.7%). The Spearman Rank analysis revealed that there was no significant relationship between risk perception index and years of driving haulage vehicle (where p-value > 0.05, p= 0.069), duration of driving for current company (where p-value > 0.05, p= 0.488) and numbers of hours driving daily (where p-value > 0.05, p= 0.094). However, the analysis showed a significant relationship between risk perception index and number of trips per day (where p-value < 0.05, p=0.000). The correlation coefficient (r) of the relationship between risk perception and drivers’ characteristics were weak and negative (where r = -0.126, -0.048, -0.117 and -0.374 respectively). It was concluded that drivers of the haulage showed positive risk perceptions towards the safety and handling activities related to haulage activities and the way these drivers perceived risk in their activities can influence their driving behaviour.