Safe, secure or punctual? A simulator study of train driver response to reports of explosives on a metro train

Many transport organizations now regard regular employees as important contributors to their security strategies. For this reason, it is essential to understand the interaction between service and security tasks. There is empirical evidence, for example, that workers under pressure to be punctual make more errors in the performance of safety procedures. It is therefore useful to determine whether punctuality goals have a similar effect on the performance of security procedures. This article reports a study conducted on a metropolitan rail system driving simulator to test whether train drivers also ‘take shortcuts’ in the perfomance of security procedures when placed under pressure of punctuality. Four hypotheses were tested using performance measures of two groups of 10 participants. The results show that there is a conflict not only between service and security goals, but also between safety and security goals. Security Journal (2016) 29, 87–105. doi:10.1057/sj.2015.46