Human factors contributing to accidents and disasters in road transport of petroleum products in Kenya

Abstract

Over the past few decades, Africa has witnessed enormous increase in the number of accidents take occur during road transport of petroleum products. Some of these accidents escalated into disasters because of release of products, with subsequent explosion and fire, resulting in several injuries and fatalities. With the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), the focus is on disaster risk reduction, rather than disaster response. This paper identifies human factors as a major cause of road transport accidents that lead to disasters when petroleum products are released. The study area was Kenya, but the findings are applicable across the continent.  The Tripod Beta methodology, an incident investigation tool, was applied to analyse some of the disasters that had occurred in the downstream petroleum sub-sector in Kenya. The analysis identified root causes of accidents and highlighted the need to focus on tanker drivers as the key stakeholders for risk reduction. The root causes were applied in the development of the questionnaire that was used in a survey. The survey was carried out using random sampling, with a sample size of 391 tanker drivers. The study concluded that tanker drivers in the age group of 30-40 years, with 6-10 years’ driving experience and minimum educational level of secondary school, displayed the best performance in prevention of accidents and spills that could lead to disasters. Tanker drivers who meet these criteria should be the target of recruitment by transporters, followed by structured safety training, to achieve Goal Zero: no accident, no spill, and no disaster in the industry.