A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ON DRIVERS BEHAVIOR WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT SERVICES IN SRI LANKA

1. A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
ON DRIVERS BEHAVIOR
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE
TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT
SERVICES IN SRI LANKA
U.P.A Indunil
TL2153
(University of Moratuwa)

2. Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 2
Timely importance of today in contemporized society............................................................... 2
Academic Importance of the topic .............................................................................................. 2
Practical importance of the topic................................................................................................. 2
Concept and theories (cultural and economic)................................................................................ 2
Applications (practical importance)................................................................................................ 3
Methodology-data collection .......................................................................................................... 3
Objectives ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Sociological understanding ......................................................................................................... 3
Behavioural understanding.......................................................................................................... 3
Conflict of drivers ....................................................................................................................... 4
Cooperative behavior of drivers.................................................................................................. 4
Description...................................................................................................................................... 4
Findings........................................................................................................................................... 5
Issues........................................................................................................................................... 6
Discussion....................................................................................................................................... 7
Recommendation ............................................................................................................................ 7
Solutions.......................................................................................................................................... 8
Psychological aspect ................................................................................................................... 8
Use of simulators......................................................................................................................... 8
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 9

3. Introduction
Timely importance of today in contemporized society
Nowadays urban transportation is a central issue to modern society and there are number of
challenges involved in providing conditions for people as well as code of bus drivers. Transport
system is a service production network, which include linked activities that feed each other’s
back. Therefore behavior of drivers in the society is important. Number of accidents happen
because of drivers in public transport. It can be vary according to the reason. Perception of
drivers and passengers about providing to a better transport system. Poor people and middle low
income people use public transport are using public buses all the time. Lot of them are not well
educated then sometimes drivers break rules or argue with drivers with aggressive mode.
As my experience, some drivers are under pressure of people, number of bus stops and the time
schedule and the competition with other vehicles for daily targeted.
Academic Importance of the topic
As the study area is transport and logistics, it is important to learning about behavior of drivers in
public transport especially about bus drivers because developing public transport is an objective
of transport planning in the current and future society. Sociologically drivers’ role is effect to the
standard of the service such as safety, conformability, maintaining bus driver’s value system.
Practical importance of the topic
The practical scenarios of studying bus drivers behavior is mainly focus on reduction road
accidents, make a better environment for passengers and pedestrians as a result attract more
people to public transport and reduction of traffic congestion in city centers, and low deaths
caused by road accidents. Road accidents cost 3003 deaths in 2016. It is an increase of more than
300 from 2015. Responsibility of 167 fatal accidents happened due to private buses and 50 due
to SLTB buses.
Concept and theories (cultural and economic)
Transport system is a service production network, which includes numerous linked activities
then these services and other services are need to be reliable, once they are essential to ensuring
rights of citizenship, as well as they are fundamental pillars for the economy. System reliability is
crucial to ensure essential mobility for economic functioning. Failures of systems generate
nuisance for the society such as accidents and time wastage.
In private bus sector. Services are provided under regulations established by government.
Services are provided sufficiently and at the right condition is being assured by public bodies.
Governments are usually engage with planning and control but updated policies and regulations
reach to the bottom level after some time. It is a problem of implementing new policies and
passengers ad drivers face unconvinced situations.

4. Applications (practical importance)
 Identify causes for accidents.
 Drivers should be trained for proper value system
 Provide support of medical and social assistance
 Bus companies can start consumer care services or provide better customer service and
identify issues.
 Implementing a standards to evaluate bus drivers behavior
 Create code of conduct for bus drivers
Methodology-data collection (observations and interviews)
The data was collected in order to understand overall behavioral functions of drivers with the
society. Determining factors and the social and economic context that surround by behavior of
drivers in public transport.
 Primary resources
Data were collected through my past experience in number of bus routes, discussions have done
with familiar drivers, third parties in Sri Lanka with and through observations
 Secondary resources
Documentary (research papers, journals, websites)
Objectives
Sociological understanding
Driver is a general person in the society. His or her experience gained through working can
directly or indirectly impact on driver’s behavior. One of the research objective is understanding
the sociological causes that effect drivers’ behavior and as a result of it, impact on drivers’
behavior of public transport.
Behavioural understanding
 Behavioural patterns of drivers.
1. Aggressiveness
2. Unrespectable
3. Unacceptable competition between buses
4. Breaking rules on the road
5. Make passengers uncomfortable
6. Ignore passenger’s value of time

5.  Issues of drivers
1. Diseases
2. Overestimate themselves
3. Ignorance of signs and lack of communication
4. Pressure of the working environment
5. Lack of education.
6. Selfishness
Conflict of drivers
Poor behaviour of bus drivers can be observed in day to day life. These conflicts cause
significant amount of deaths and property damage, specially conflicts with other drivers who go
on same route that may occur due to completion for picking passengers and conflict with other
vehicle owners I case of traffic confections. In the other side this is a reason for leaving public
transport by passengers. Learning what the true cause for these conflicts are is another objective of
study.
Cooperative behavior of drivers
Drivers represent friendly cooperative behavior with passengers as well as unfriendly behavior.
This diversity of drivers’ behavior impact on the passenger utility.
Description
 Age of people. Drivers are age of 20 to 55 range working in public transport sector but
people under 30 years work without absenteeism. Others may not come to work due to
illnesses because bus drivers in in this group have worked over a longer time period of
their careers in conditions that would favor the emergence of diseases caused by
repetitive motion, maintenance of prolonged bad posture, exposure to hot weather and
noise, as well as to situations involving anxiety, resting or staying with their families for
a while
 Period of driving. It is depends on the rote and trips per day in a particular route
 Part time/full time or professional/nonprofessional. People barely see part time drivers in
Sri Lanka. Most of them are full time and non-professional, they are included to private
bus sector

6.  Length of employment is years. Low turnover rate found because most of them have only
basic education and have a fashion for driving except few. Other reasons are they are
unable to find a job with enough qualifications, the money make in this occupation is
sufficient
 Driving is being evaluated or not, in the current public transport evaluating is not
happening properly due to some difficulties then establishment of practical evaluation
method is a timely necessity.
Findings
Ability, attitudes and self-behavior of drivers effects to different income classes to public
transport, Basically Sri Lankan social structure is based purely on money and the power. It can
be divided into four income levels.
 Upper income level
It is a very small group among Sri Lankans it consist of industrialist, businessmen, senior
executives and ministers of government, they are not using public transport except in a
case of emergency.
 Upper middle income
These people are educated professionals such as engineers, doctors. Most of them have
cars and small portion of them are using public transport. Drivers have a habit of
neglecting these people while they are traveling in the bus. Drivers are engaged in
argument with them and that can be turned into conflicts.
 Lower middle income category
Working class. Most of them are using public transport and deal with bus drivers in many
ways
 Lower Income category.
These people are very poor, earn money to survive the day. Usually they can be seen as
labors and lives in in under developed rural areas, slums or shanty towns. They use public
transport as the only transport mode, a strong interaction can be seen with it.
The technology available for drivers is also of paramount importance to the excellence issue and
to the quality of the drivers' work
this decision is taken in accordance with external demands on when and how to proceed with the
fleet's renewal; system strategic planning - creation or modification of lines, diversion of routes,
allocation of lines to companies from other consortia and dimensioning of lines (frequency, type
of car); the revenue of the company's transportation system - meaning the differential cost in the
revenue sharing; traffic - a punctuality mediator that influences the user's evaluation

7. Issues
1. Group of professional drivers with increased risk of being involved in a crash at work.
Bus drivers have responsibility for passengers’ lives driving large, heavy vehicles that
are constantly pulling in and out of traffic. Careless driving leads to crashes in the roads,
drivers drive vehicles too close to other vehicles and increase the possibility of crashes
and also unacceptable occurred in high completion Lack of experience of driving a bus
was more influential to crashes than age of the driver in the first year of operational bus
driving
2. Novice bus drivers are older and more experienced compared with novice car drivers.
But after the first 2 or 3 years, age was found to be more influential. Young and older
drivers were more at risk of being involved in a crash compared with middle-aged
drivers. Research also found that about 50% of all bus crashes were contributed by
novice bus drivers in their first year of service and that most of these at-fault crashes take
place at bus stops and junctions
3. Since novice bus drivers have had less contact with traffic and less time to develop and refine
their mental models, they are less able to correctly predict the development of traffic situations
than experienced bus drivers
4. Lack of awareness of road signs and communication drivers ignore road signs. This is a
key issue for road crashes. The concept of road sings not only for comfortable transport
but also it reinforce the safety of the road as well. Now there are number of types of road
signs such as,
 Warning signs- inform to people about awareness of possible danger
 Regulatory signs-tell people how people should obey rules of the road
 Guide signs-inform about constructions that being done on the road
 Recreational and activities signs-these signs point out nearby activities such as
camping, boating
 Service signs-to find services like hospitals
5. Communication issues of drivers (language and education problems) illegal licenses,
Communication disturbance and continuously hones and it is disturbance for passengers
and other third parties
6. Aggressiveness of drivers leads to bus vs. bus conflict and driver and passenger
conflicts. Schedule problems, uncover route time on time, and long rout buses take short
passengers of short trips
7. Drivers don’t respect passengers or other vehicles’ drivers

8. 8. Drivers are under the pressure of time schedules, bus at halts stoppings, and completion
of buses, traffic congestion in the road while driving, complains of drivers, complexity
of road system
9. Bus drivers are trying to overload passengers to buses, people are being harassed
specially ladies and have uncomfortable journey
10. Long distance route’s bus drivers are sitting on the driving seats for ours and sometimes
they bite “Bulathwita” for hours these behaviors drag them to diseases like piles, back
pain and cancers.
11. Drivers drive all over the road instead using bus lanes it occur additional traffic
congestion
12. Due to competition Bus drivers take passengers quickly when they take a single step and
load passengers except the capacity of the bus that may expose passengers to accidents
or drop from the buses.
13. When a passenger getting off a bus. If the bus is so crowded an additional time is added
to the route time and passengers get fainted and face inconvenience.
14. Drivers those who are working in long routes getting fatting in the middle of the travel,
may fell to sleep and passengers in danger
15. Bus drivers don’t test the lights, engine states and break system of buses daily and also
passenger bell and seat conditions that also a duty of a responsible bus driver.
16.Incidents like robberies that happens inside the buses, often keeping the driver and the
conductor hostages.
Discussion
Today accidents are major threat for the world because accidents cause to kill number of human
within second. So it is worthwhile understanding behaviour of the drivers to get rid of this issue.
As well as it is critically important in be aware in developing policies of transportation. Not only
that but also it is important to provide equity vs efficiency service for the each stage of divers to
get acceleration for the economy.
Recommendation
 Quality of the service provided
 Economy and worker's health (drivers, collectors, company's internal staff)
 Features that are unique and positive in terms of quality of the vehicles as compared with
other companies, not only for the users but also for the drivers.
 Provide a code of conduct for drivers

9. Solutions
Psychological aspect
Consultancy Social Service is the first place where the workers are listened to, where they have
the freedom to express their grievances and personal problems; it is described by workers as a
facilitating department. This department's focus is to assist workers with matters related to social
relations, particularly as regards conflicts, fears and anxieties. The greatest complaint is
associated with difficulties in interpersonal relations (with management, colleagues, customers,
traffic, etc.). They say that conflict is often associated with the allocation of working hours.
Use of simulators
Using a Bus Simulator for Novice Bus Drivers for training them but there is no method of
training bus drivers in public bus industry. Simulator would be the most beneficial training
intervention to address decision making at critical events. Hazard perception and anticipation
have been singled out as especially important skills for road safety. Drivers with better hazard
perception skills are described as having a more effective predictive mental model of the driving
environment.
A simulator would enable
● Presentation of high risk scenarios impossible in the real system for reasons of danger
● Whole task support including conditions of bus driver workload and time pressure
● Standardization of training intervention in a controlled environment
● Analysis of task performance to enhance learning with repeated trials
● Repeated performance of the same task until a benchmark is reached
● Presentation of instructions dependent on previous responses by the driver
Using simulators pus sector can put restrictions for some scenarios in the work and also allowing
Web cameras in the buses can capture data of the field and can evaluate drivers’ behavior
 Ignorance of road signs can be reduces by raise awareness of drivers and effective
communication
 The robberies that happen inside the bus, often keeping the driver and the conductor
hostages. Robberies are currently considered one of the possible events responsible for
emotional destabilization of the team working in the operation. The crew is trained not to
react in those situations

10. Conclusion
Both study results and analysis emphasize the importance of considering a range of variables and
their interrelationships to understand the challenges related to ensuring excellence in transport
services production.
Learning about drivers behavior is necessity of time due to role of driver contribution for society
is a major factor because it is connected with other social economical activities. Identifying the
behaviour of driver, it is enable to generate various opportunities such as reduce accident level,
enhance vehicle flow, avoid traffic snarl-ups and etc. beyond it that expose to find which are the
suitable aspects should enhance to achieve targeted economic goals of the country
References:
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Ministry of transport. 2017. Statistics. [ONLINE] Available
at: http://www.transport.gov.lk/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=279&Itemid=171
&lang=en. [Accessed 16 December 2017].
Can a Bus Driver Simulator Improve Driver Behaviour? – DriverMetrics. 2017. Can a Bus Driver
Simulator Improve Driver Behaviour? – DriverMetrics. [ONLINE] Available
at: https://www.drivermetrics.com/2011/10/19/can-a-bus-driver-simulator-improve-driver-behaviour-2/.
[Accessed 16 December 2017].
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Lecture notes
https://www.drivermetrics.com/2011/10/19/can-a-bus-driver-simulator-improve-driver-behaviour-2/