Volume : 4, Issue : 4, April - 2015

ASSESSMENT OF VISUAL TRAITS OF HEAVY VEHICLE DRIVERS IN INDIA

Chakrabarty Neelima, Velmurugan. S, Gupta Kamini, Rikku Reetesh, Shatakshi Shriya

Abstract :

<p>&nbsp;Inappropriate driving behaviour is considered to be one of the major causes of road crashes in India as compared to&nbsp;</p> <div>defective geometric design of pavement or mechanical defects in the vehicles. More than 65 % of road crashes on Indian&nbsp;</div> <div>roads are caused due to the fault of the road users apart from the other factors such as faulty road design, poor road&nbsp;</div> <div>maintenance and vehicle conditions account for the remaining share of road fatalities. Considering the increasing trend of road crash scenario in&nbsp;</div> <div>India occurring due to road users fault, as a starting point, it was felt prudent to assess the visual abilities of the heavy vehicle drivers.&nbsp;</div> <div>Objective : The objective of this study was to assess the visual traits of the heavy vehicle drivers.&nbsp;</div> <div>Methodology: In this study 535 heavy vehicle commercial drivers were selected across different age groups. During the study different&nbsp;</div> <div>psychophysical vision related tests were conducted e.g. (visual acuity, night vision test and glare recovery test).</div> <div>Conclusions: The study highlights that all drivers performed drastically poor in all visual tests. Among the vision tests over fifty drivers performed&nbsp;</div> <div>&ldquo;Below Average&rdquo; in glare test. While over fourteen percent drivers performed &ldquo;Below Average&rdquo; and eleven percent drivers performed &ldquo;Poor&rdquo; in&nbsp;</div> <div>Visual Acuity Test which highlights that the drivers are drastically poor in Visual Capacity.</div> <div>&nbsp;Recommendations : On the basis of this study recommends to carry out special screening and training of the goods vehicle drivers and special&nbsp;</div> <div>screening and training of the all commercial and Good vehicle drivers in India .</div>