Psychological well-being and multimodal predictors of operational safety in heavy-haul railway drivers

Abstract

In high-risk, high-workload heavy-haul railway operations, locomotive crew safety performance depends not only on technical proficiency but is also strongly influenced by psychological and physiological states. Using 1117 real-world operational records from 203 heavy-haul railway drivers, this study examined the predictive roles of psychological health, cognitive task performance, and physiological indicators in distinguishing perfect from non-perfect operation events. The results indicated that better overall psychological health at the driver level was associated with a lower incidence of non-perfect operations. In contrast, performance on individual cognitive tasks did not show stable independent predictive effects. Physiological indicators were not significant overall but demonstrated a protective association under specific cognitive load conditions, particularly during digit memory tasks. Together, these findings suggest that operational safety is more closely related to drivers' general psychological health across tasks than to isolated cognitive ability measures. The results highlight the value of integrating psychological, cognitive, and physiological indicators when assessing operational risk among heavy-haul railway drivers.