In Korean society, the theme of human errors in railway has been emerging as a critical issue. As far as human error studies are concerned, main trend has been inclined to be led by industrial engineering and systems science. Apart from those trends, this study empirically highlighted the relationship between depression, which has been a frequent research subject in the medical science and psychology, and accidents, with setting depression as an exogenous variable and cognitive failure and mistake as endogenous variables, respectively. Results of hypotheses test for the 204 respondents showed that driver's depression has a significant effect on accidents mediated by cognitive failure and mistake. This findings suggest the need for exploring the diverse latent factors causing human errors and for understanding the complex cognitive process as well as for establishing integrative countermeasures to mitigate human errors.

This study intended to testify the causality among three variables such as accident, depression and cognitive failure of the train drivers. For this purpose, two research models were suggested. Model 1 hypothesized the causality among three variables as 'depression ⟶ cognitive failure ⟶ accident'. On the other hand, model 2 hypothesized the causality among three variables as 'accident ⟶ depression ⟶ cognitive failure'.Results based on AMOS using 416 train drivers' questionnaire showed that model 2 is more valid than model 1. The statistical result of model 1 showed that depression has a positive effect on cognitive failure, however no significant relationship between depression and accident as well as between cognitive failure and accident. In model 2, the result showed that the accident has a positive effect on cognitive failure mediated by depression. This result suggests the necessity for establishment of countermeasures to mitigate mistake and cognitive failure caused by train drivers in a wider context, considering the causality between accident and depression.

This study highlights the theme of human error of train drivers, conducting empirical analysis on the relationship between organizational culture, safety climates, safety behavior, and accident. The empirical test results based on questionnaires received from 223 train drivers working at A subway firm indicated that relationship conflict and psychological reward as the elements of organizational culture variables showed a significant positive effect on CEO philosophy, communication, and boss's leadership. And only boss's leadership showed a positive influence on safety behavior, which in turn showed a significant negative relationship with accidents.