A driving record analysis of suspension and revocation effects on the drinking-driving offender

Past studies have demonstrated that license suspension or revocation reduces subsequent DUI convictions and traffic accidents of multiple DUI offenders to a greater degree than jail sentences and fines alone, or participation in an alternative alcohol abuse treatment program. This study describes the duration of the impact of recidivism-Ievel-specific licensing actions on DUI offenders at three recidivism levels. Results indicate that the first DUI offender (who receives no licensing action) represents a DUI recidivism and accident risk comparable to the suspended second DUI offender during the year following their respective DUI convictions. Furthermore, additional record entries indicate that at least 32% of suspended second offenders drive during the period of the licensing action; at least 61% of revoked third offenders acquire a record entry during the licensing action. In addition to the results, major program recommendations concerning the first offender and the use of restricted licenses are outlined.     

Differences in traffic violations and at-fault crashes between license suspension and revocation

Upon conviction for particular traffic offenses, drivers can have their licenses revoked. Drivers who receive license revocation have an opportunity to apply for a sentence reduction, and some of those who apply receive a reduced sanction — license suspension. There may be differences between drivers whose license was revoked as originally sentenced and drivers who received the reduced sanction of license suspension with regard to traffic violations and crashes after driving privileges are restored. This study verified the differences during the follow-up periods of 6, 12, and 18 months using analysis of covariance and the t-test with stratified samples based on the police profiles of approximately 154,000 drivers in South Korea. The study found that drivers in the group whose license had been suspended committed traffic violations and caused traffic crashes less often for all time periods than those whose license had been revoked. However, omitted factors such as the attitude of suspended drivers and exposure to traffic violations and crashes (e.g., driving frequency after license reinstatement), are likely to affect the findings; thus, caution should be exercised when the findings are referenced for policy implications.     

A critical review on the effectiveness of drinking-driving rehabilitation programmes

Research designs, assessment instruments, and follow-up procedures for the evaluation of D.W.I. rehabilitation programmes are considered and the results of these programmes are reviewed. While evaluations of the rehabilitation programmes have been hindered by methodological difficulties, the information presently available indicates that certain of these programmes may reduce recidivism in D.W.I. offenders. These results need to be replicated in future well-controlled studies; methods for assessing which individuals would benefit most from specific programmes are also required.     

A survey of magnetooptic effects

The interaction of light with matter involves the electronic structure of the matter. In particular, the interaction is affected by the magnetic state of the medium, and this gives rise to the magnetooptical effects. The Faraday, Kerr, and Voigt effects are described, and their derivation from Maxwell's equations and the constitutive relations are given. The microscopic origins of the effects are discussed heuristically. A few representative applications of the magnetooptic effects to magnetic recording and to the control of light are explained.     

Improving the effectiveness of drinking-driving enforcement through increased efficiency

After reviewing previous enforcement programs designed to reduce driving while impaired (DWI). it is proposed that DWI enforcement could be more effective if it is conducted more efficiently. A number of legislative changes which may improve efficiency are discussed including: per se laws, lower legal limits, random roadside checks, random breath testing, mandatory blood tests for injured drivers, administrative adjudication and short-term licence suspensions. Several operational changes are also addressed: police officer selection and training, use of visual detection cues, timing and location of enforcement. It is concluded that DWI enforcement could be more effective if highly publicized, periodic, night-time random breath testing blitzes were conducted in an unpredictable fashion as far as time and location.     

Effects of license revocation on drunk-driving offenders

Revoking or suspending the licenses of persons convicted of driving while intoxicated has often been claimed to be uniquely effective in reducing subsequent dangerous driving, as indexed by crashes and violations. This finding holds despite the impression that many suspended and revoked drivers continue to drive illegally. The research described here inquires into the operation of license actions. It uses intensive personal interviews with offenders to obtain information concerning the nature and amount of illegal driving and the effects of license deprivation on employment and other aspects of the offenders' lives.     

Theory of superconducting magnet suspension: main results survey

The paper is a survey of theoretical achievements on electro-dynamic suspension of high speed ground vehicles with superconducting magnets. The most essential problems connected with the subject in question are discussed, namely: calculation of lift and drag forces acting on a superconducting magnet, the latter moving above a guideway structure which may be of two different types (either conducting sheet or a series of discrete loops); influence of irregularities of the guideway structure; vertical and longitudinal stability of suspension.     

Solid-solid contacts due to surface roughness and their effects on suspension behaviour

Solid-solid contacts due to microscopic surface roughness in viscous fluids were examined by observing the translational and rotational behaviours of a suspended sphere falling past a lighter sphere or down an inclined surface. In both cases, a roll-slip behaviour was observed, with the gravitational forces balanced by not only hydrodynamic forces but also normal and tangential solid-solid contact forces. Moreover, the nominal separation between the surfaces due to microscopic surface roughness elements is not constant but instead varies due to multiple roughness scales. By inverting the system, so that the heavy sphere fell away from the lighter sphere or the plane, it was found that the average nominal separation increases with increasing angle of inclination of the plane or the surface of the lighter sphere from horizontal; the larger asperities lift the sphere up from the opposing surface and then gravity at large angles of inclination is too weak to pull the sphere back down to the opposing surface before another large asperity is encountered. The existence of microscopic surface roughness and solid-solid contacts is shown to modify the rheological properties of suspensions. For example, the presence of compressive, but not tensile, contact forces removes the reversibility of sphere-sphere interactions and breaks the symmetry of the particle trajectories. As a result, suspensions of rough spheres exhibit normal stress differences that are absent for smooth spheres. For the conditions studied, surface roughness reduces the effective viscosity of a suspension by limiting the lubrication resistance during near-contact motion, and it also modifies the suspension microstructure and hydrodynamic diffusivity.     

桥塔风效应对大跨度悬索桥抖振响应的影响

以润扬长江公路大桥南汊悬索桥(润扬悬索桥)为研究对象,首先基于ANSYS建立了该桥的三维有限元计算模型,同时基于桥址区实测风特性建立了该桥考虑桥塔风效应的三维脉动风场,在此基础上进行了该桥非线性抖振响应时域分析,重点研究了桥塔风效应对大跨度悬索桥风致抖振响应的影响。研究结果表明,主塔风效应对大跨度悬索桥主梁抖振响应的影响很小。就主塔而言,其顺桥向抖振响应受桥塔风效应的影响也很小,但横桥向抖振响应在考虑桥塔风效应时显著增加,在进行抖振响应分析时不容忽视。研究结果对大跨度悬索桥的风致抖振分析具有参考价值。     

Assessment of university students' coping strategies and reasons for driving in high-risk drinking-driving situations

A total of 116 students (87 women; 29 men) enrolled at a large, public Midwestern university in the United States were recruited to complete a set of demographic questionnaires and drinking-driving episode surveys. The latter surveys assessed participants' reported motivations for driving or not driving during four recent drinking episodes. Content analyses were used to develop lists of commonly reported reasons for not driving (e.g. found alternate transportation), reasons for driving after drinking (e.g. perceived need to go to destination), potential alternatives to driving after drinking (e.g. walking to destination), and strategies used to avoid detection or arrest by police (e.g. driving more slowly, using back roads or side streets). Participants made both situational and self-coping attributions to explain why they did not, on occasion, drive after drinking. These results may be used as a foundation for prevention and education programs that are designed to: (a) encourage use of coping strategies and alternatives to driving while disputing peer-generated justifications for driving after drinking, and (b) challenge the value of potentially unsafe strategies for avoiding detection and arrest when driving under the influence.     

Effects of admission and treatment strategies of DWI courts on offender outcomes

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to classify DWI courts on the basis of the mix of difficult cases participating in the court (casemix severity) and the amount of involvement between the court and participant (service intensity). Using our classification typology, we assessed how casemix severity and service intensity are associated with program outcomes. We expected that holding other factors constant, greater service intensity would improve program outcomes while a relatively severe casemix would result in worse program outcomes.

Methods

The study used data from 8 DWI courts, 7 from Michigan and 1 from North Carolina. Using a 2-way classification system based on court casemix severity and program intensity, we selected participants in 1 of the courts, and alternatively 2 courts as reference groups. Reference group courts had relatively severe casemixes and high service intensity. We used propensity score matching to match participants in the other courts to participants in the reference group court programs. Program outcome measures were the probabilities of participants’: failing to complete the court's program; increasing educational attainment; participants improving employment from time of program enrollment; and re-arrest.

Results

For most outcomes, our main finding was that higher service intensity is associated with better outcomes for court participants, as anticipated, but a court's casemix severity was unrelated to study outcomes.

Conclusions

Our results imply that devoting more resources to increasing duration of treatment is productive in terms of better outcomes, irrespective of the mix of participants in the court's program.     

Polar liquids: A survey of purification,conduction mechanisms,and interfacial effects

Interest is reviving in the dielectric properties of liquids. The present paper is concerned with a specific group of polar liquids having electrical conductivities which lie in the intermediate range between those of insulating oils and those of liquids such as electrolytic solutions.It has been found recently that ion exchange techniques provide a powerful means of purifying polar liquids. In this way, liquids have been deionised so effectively that their resistivities have been increased by three orders of magnitude as compared with previously published values.Published work on this subject is summarised. Removal of trace impurities from liquids may help to clarify mechanisms of electrical conduction, charge injection, and charge exchange phenomena in polar liquids.Preliminary results of investigations made by the authors are included in the article.     

A survey of research and studies on design

This review is based on two hundred responses to a questionnaire designed by the Design Methodology Unit, Department of Praxiology, Polish Academy of Sciences. On the basis of the replies it shows the state of research in design and the applied sciences.     

A survey on the resource-constrained project scheduling problem

In this paper, research on the resource-constrained project scheduling problem is classified according to specified objectives and constraints. Each classified area is extensively surveyed, and special emphasis is given to trends in recent research. Specific papers involving nonrenewable resource constraints and time/cost-based objectives are discussed in detail because they present models that are close representations of real-world problems. The difficulty of solving such complex models by optimization techniques is noted. For the purposes of this survey, a set of 78 optimally solved test problems from the literature and a second set of 110 benchmark problems have been subjected to analysis with some well-known dispatching rules and a scheduling algorithm that consists of a decision-making process utilizing the problem constraints as a base of selection. The computational results are reported and discussed in the text. Constructive scheduling algorithms that are directly based on the problem constraints and whose performances are independent of problem characteristics are identified as a promising area for future research.     

A three-dimensional problem on the dynamics of a suspension of a floated gyroscope

The dynamics of a floated gyroscope suspension is analyzed. The computational model is constructed and the stress-strain state of the float surface is analytically described. An arbitrarily shaped meridian line is considered in the general case, which makes it possible, as a particular case, to describe the dynamics of convex, concave and cylindrical surfaces of a float. The mechanism of occurrence of an additional error in a gyroscope under the action of penetrating acoustic radiation is explained. __________ Translated from Problemy Prochnosti, No. 3, pp. 53–69, May–June, 2008.     

Effectiveness of customized Victim Impact Panels on first-time DWI offender inmates

This study investigates the effectiveness of a customized Victim Impact Panel (VIP) on reducing 'driving while impaired' recidivism, alcohol consumption and drinking and driving behavior. The study was conducted at a 28-day Detention/Treatment Program in a largely rural county in northwestern New Mexico. Study participants were randomly assigned to attend or not attend a VIP while participating in the program for court-defined first-time driving while intoxicated (DWI) offenders. There were no significant differences between the two groups on alcohol consumption, drinking and driving behavior, or recidivism within 2 years. These findings support the findings of other studies that VIPs do not produce a differential benefit with regards to recidivism of those convicted as a first-time DWI offenders.     

A DEM-based analysis of the influence of aggregate structure on suspension shear yield stress

This study theoretically examined the effect of aggregate structure on the suspension shear yield stress. The aggregation process of colloidal particles was simulated using the discrete element model (DEM) combined with the well-known DLVO theory. The predicted aggregate structural characteristics, namely the coordination number and inter-particle forces were then used in a modified version of the Flatt and Bowen mechanistic model [6] to calculate the corresponding suspension yield stress. The effect of key parameters such as solid volume fraction, suspension pH and ionic strength on the aggregate structure and hence the yield stress of the suspension was investigated.The results showed that the yield stress increased significantly under conditions that were favourable for formation of complex net-like aggregate structures, such as high solid volume fractions, pH values near the iso-electric point, and high ionic strengths. In such cases, the mean coordination number reached a maximum value which was considered to be dependent on the particle size and size distribution. The suspension yield stress exhibited a power law dependency on the solid volume fraction. The interconnected network structure developed at high solid volume fractions was found to be the major contributing factor to the observed high suspension yield stress. As the particle–particle repulsion became significant, a decrease in both the number of bonds and the mechanical bonding strength of the aggregate structure was observed. That was considered to be responsible for the reduction in the suspension yield stress. The suspension yield stress became independent of the suspension ionic strength when the ionic strength exceeded the critical coagulation concentration. Satisfactory agreements were obtained between simulation results and the published experimental data.     

A method of vehicle active suspension design

This paper contributes to the design of active suspension systems, by the use of spatial vehicle model, without filtered feedback of the control system. A method of “stochastic parameters optimisation” has been utilized for the optimisation of the parameters of active suspension. The optimisation objective was simultaneous minimization of sprung mass vibration and standard deviation of forces in tire-to-ground contact area and vehicle handling.     

A mathematical model of suspension with saltation

Summary A theoretical approach to the treatment of wind erosion data, particularly from a wind tunnel, is presented. Considerations are given to the utilisation of a real data set in validation of the model, data that will be presented in a forthcoming paper. Following this, the physics of particle suspension, saltation and the turbulent boundary layer are examined. Two different mathematical models evolve: one considers only suspension, another evokes Bagnold's observation that eroding material merely shifts the velocity profile and the effect of the airborne material on the effective density of the air parcel. These produce a final, relatively simple expression that credibly fits the data of Gerety and Slingerland. A critique of the approach reveals it to be an adequate expression of the known mechanisms of suspension and saltation. Derived algebraic forms for integrated collectors show several of the same logarithmic power dependences. Importantly, the results show little influence of saltation itself on the profile. It appears that the saltation process is responsible for a feedback such that the eddy diffusion process for particle movement is effectively enhanced. The combination of an appropriate correction of the pitot data (following Scott and Carter) and a complete mass balance has removed the kink from the velocity profile and also the need to consider the saltation process itself in the particle mass balance.