Responsibility of the bus operator in terms of safety and health: A Malaysian case study

Abstract

This paper presents the bus agencies perspective towards the express bus safety based on the bus maintenance and safety factors to reduce the road accidents in Malaysia. Express buses were scored the highest percentage in bus accident cases primarily owning to the driver negligence. This survey was conducted among 34 respondents working with the bus agencies. The respondents composed of the employees in administration and management positions of the companies. The questionnaires were developed based on the five-point Likert Scale to assess the safety perception of express buses. The questionnaires have a high reliability of Alpha Cronbach's score at 0.9362 in safety aspects. In the aspect of management commitment, the Alpha Cronbach's score is 0.6479 and 0.6061 was recorded in the aspect of suggestion improvement. In term of improvement suggestion, 94.12% of respondents were satisfied with the decision of bus agencies to improve the safety and health aspects of the company drivers and employees. Furthermore, 91.18% agreed with the bus agencies to use the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems in order to monitor and manage the safety of buses during service period. Hence, effective safety protocols such as drivers monitoring system must be implemented by responsible agencies to mitigate the careless behaviours of drivers and improve the safety of buses.