Abstract

Replacement driver should drive customer’s car, and usually work at night with drunken customers. In current study, we undertook the face-to-face interview for replacement drivers about occupational safety and health. Most of all, replacement drivers suffered from violence by drunken customer, and that aggravated overstrain for driving. Illegal demands including breaking traffic laws was requested, and over speed sometime was requested from customer. The insecurity of employment and night work itself are also job characteristic of replacement driver. After that, we undertook quantitative study as below.

The questionnaire was constructed by using the results of above fact-to-face interview. The sub-items were 1) car accident history, 2) experience of violence and verbal abuse, 3) job characteristics, 4) health status (suicidal ideation, depression, sleep disorder, self-esteem), 5) status of social network. Total 166 replacement drivers were participated in current study.

The mean age was 53 years old. 65% of total replacement drivers had graduated university or more, and 67% of them married. Almost 50% of them had experienced one or more car accident during past 12 months. More than one third and half of them experienced physical violence and verbal abuse during past 12 months, respectively. Those experiences disrupt attention for driving, and 24% of that negative afterimage was still remained until serving next other customer. Furthermore, experience of negative afterimage related to almost two times higher prevalence of depression and suicidal ideation (all p value were below 0.05).

In summary, our current study suggested that facing drunken customer, night work and driving itself were important occupational hazard of replacement drivers in Korea. Those occupational hazard were related to work place violence, sleep disorder, traffic accident as well as related psychological problem such as depression and suicidal ideation.