Prof. Martin Lavallière1
1Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Saguenay, Canada
Driving is an essential part of police work. From patrolling to emergency driving, the police must continuously be on the lookout for information to enable them to maintain their safety behind the wheel and that of the population they serve. Studies of road accidents at work have shown that police officers are not immune to potentially fatal road crashes. This project aims to understand better police officers’ perceptions of traffic collisions occurring at work and, more specifically, how they are perceived in their workplace.
A questionnaire on various facets of driving was completed. by 624 police officers. More specifically, respondents were asked: “How is a collision perceived in your workplace?”. Their responses were classified by theme according to Hollnagel and groupings by themes addressed by police officers.
For the groupings, seven themes emerge from the comments made by the police officers: 1) Skills, temperaments, and driving experience, 2) Emergency driving, 3) Driving of other road users (general public), 4) Organizations and colleagues from work, 5) Police ethics and sanctions, 6) Context and realities of work and 7) Training, awareness, and organizational support. Comments collected from the police officers clearly show a divergent trichotomy of road collisions’ perceptions: Vision of police officers, Vision of the commandment, and Vision of the population they serve. These results highlight the challenges faced in developing a sustainable and robust road safety culture in the long term and avoiding forms of ostracization in the workplace towards drivers involved in a collision.
The police officers questioned fully perceive driving as a source of risk to their health and safety while on duty. The knowledge from this research will make it possible to better orient awareness and training programs in emergency and preventive driving for police officers and future police officers.
Biography:
Martin Lavallière, Ph.D. is a professor at the Department of health sciences at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) since August 2016. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from Université Laval (Québec, Canada). He completed a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT AgeLab (2013-15) where he evaluated the impact on driving performance of aging and technologies. He completed a second postdoctoral fellow at HEC Montréal (2015-16), working on the impact of work-related collisions on workers. Since then, he has completed numerous projects working closely with emergency respondents and public safety agencies to address this critical health and safety topic.