Socio-Demographic Factors as Determinants of Safety among Driver's in Sagamu Local Government, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed the perceived influence of socio-demographic factors on driver's safety in Sagamu Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria. A total of 150 drivers were selected as subjects of study using simple random sampling technique. A self-developed scale tagged ‘Influence of formal education and experience on driver's safety questionnaire' with a reliability index of 0.73 was used to elicit response from the participants.  Three hypotheses were formulated and tested using multiple regression analysis and Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient.  The significance was fixed at 0.05 level. Findings reveal significant combined influence of experience, age, education and marital status on drivers' safety (F _{(4, 143)} = 4.925, p < .05) amounting to the variance of 9.7%. In addition, age and driving experience had significant relative influence while education and marital status had no significant influence on driver's safety. Furthermore, there were significant relationships between age and drivers' safety, driving experience and drivers' safety and no significant relationships between marital status and drivers' safety and educational qualification and drivers' safety. It was concluded that an investigation of the factors influencing drivers' safety is a worthwhile venture and should be addressed with all sense of urgency, hence it was recommended that underage youths should be prevented from driving while awareness should be created among drivers on the danger of driving without having adequate amount of experience.