Sleep quality and the association with traffic accidents

This cross-sectional study was constructed among 609 taxi drivers of 43 taxi stations in southern and eastern part of Ankara in 2006. The data of the study was collected via questionnaire contains items on sociodemographic characeristics, working conditions, sleep quality, and accidents in which taxi drivers involved in preceding month. The sleep quality was assesed by Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. The mean age of the group was 39.5±10.2 years. Nearly sixty percent of the taxi drivers evaluated his health as “good”, 18.6% had chronic disease, 41.4% was conducting physical exercise, 70.3% was smoking, 41.4% was alcohol consumer, and 3.4% was drug user. Nearly six percent of the taxi drivers were conducting another job, and 63.7% of them were working more than 8 hours per day. The mean score of PSQI was 4.5±3.1 for the group, and 42.5% of them had scores equal to 5 and higher. Health perception, physical exercise, alcohol intake, drug usage, working in another job and having chronical disease were associated with  PSQI scores.
Seventy seven taxi drivers had been involved 67 traffic accidents in the precceding  month. The most common type of accident was two car crash (76.3%), and resulted mostly with physical damage (98%). The taxi drivers who had scores over the cut of point of PSQI involved to accidents in the preceeding month significantly more than others (p=0.001).
The low sleep quality level is an important factor for traffic accidents of taxi drivers. It was needed interventions to improve the sleep quality of taxi drivers, for safer city traffic conditions.