Forecasting and evaluation of traffic safety impacts: driving assistance systems against road infrastructure measures

The authors examine the use of a one-variable first-order grey model (GM(1,1)), to model and forecast the trend of the level of cumulative traffic accident severity for strategic scenarios for implementation of driving assistance systems, physical infrastructure redesign and combinations of the two categories of measures. The accident severity levels (in terms of fatalities and hospitalisations) of five scenarios for the period 2003-2007 are analysed and modelled. In addition, the trend of fatalities and hospitalisations for each scenario for the years 2008 until 2010 is forecasted. For further policy evaluation, the costs of each scenario (for the years 2003-2010) are estimated. By using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) the five scenarios for improving road traffic safety are compared     

The development of an inherent safety approach to the prevention of domino accidents

The severity of industrial accidents in which a domino effect takes place is well known in the chemical and process industry. The application of an inherent safety approach for the prevention of escalation events leading to domino accidents was explored in the present study. Reference primary scenarios were analyzed and escalation vectors were defined. Inherent safety distances were defined and proposed as a metric to express the intensity of the escalation vectors. Simple rules of thumb were presented for a preliminary screening of these distances. Swift reference indices for layout screening with respect to escalation hazard were also defined. Two case studies derived from existing layouts of oil refineries were selected to understand the potentialities coming from the application in the methodology. The results evidenced that the approach allows a first comparative assessment of the actual domino hazard in a layout, and the identification of critical primary units with respect to escalation events. The methodology developed also represents a useful screening tool to identify were to dedicate major efforts in the design of add-on measures, optimizing conventional passive and active measures for the prevention of severe domino accidents.     

The effect of road and environmental characteristics on pedestrian hit-and-run accidents in Ghana

The number of pedestrians who have died as a result of being hit by vehicles has increased in recent years, in addition to vehicle passenger deaths. Many pedestrians who were involved in road traffic accident died as a result of the driver leaving the pedestrian who was struck unattended at the scene of the accident. This paper seeks to determine the effect of road and environmental characteristics on pedestrian hit-and-run accidents in Ghana. Using pedestrian accident data extracted from the National Road Traffic Accident Database at the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana, a binary logit model was employed in the analysis. The results from the estimated model indicate that fatal accidents, unclear weather, nighttime conditions, and straight and flat road sections without medians and junctions significantly increase the likelihood that the vehicle driver will leave the scene after hitting a pedestrian. Thus, integrating median separation and speed humps into road design and construction and installing street lights will help to curb the problem of pedestrian hit-and-run accidents in Ghana.     

The influence of the infrastructure characteristics in urban road accidents occurrence

This paper summarizes the result of a study regarding the creation of tools that can be used in intervention methods in the planning and management of urban road networks in Portugal.     

Willingness to use safety belt and levels of injury in car accidents

In this article, we develop a bivariate ordered Probit model to analyze the decision to fasten the safety belt in a car and the resulting severity of accidents if it happens. The approach takes into account the fact that the decision to fasten the safety belt has a direct causal effect on the category of injury if an accident happens. Our application to a sample drawn from the database of French accident reports in 2003 for three populations of car users (drivers, front passengers, rear passengers) shows that fastening the safety belt is significantly related to a decrease in severe injuries but it shows also that these car users compensate partly for this safety benefit. Furthermore, it is observed that demographic characteristics of car users, as well as transport facilities, play important roles in decisions to fasten safety belts and in the eventual resulting accident injuries.     

Road accidents in Slovenia involving a pedestrian, cyclist or motorcyclist and a car

We analyse the group of road traffic accidents in Slovenia in which a car driver and a pedestrian, cyclist or motorcyclist are involved. At the beginning some basic data are presented from the available database on traffic accidents. The selected group is then analysed by use of the logistic regression method. Based on the obtained results, some guidelines for transport policy action--aimed at decreasing the number of accidents with severe injury or fatality--are identified.     

Robust design of an interior hard trim to improve occupant safety in a vehicle crash

Head injury ranks among the top contributors in automobile accidents. Consequently, although styling is treated important, safety of occupants in a crash receives preemptive priority in the design of automotive interior components. Additionally, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 201 has laid down certain requirements to be fulfilled by automobile manufacturers for producing a safe vehicle. One of the requirements stipulate dummy equivalent of the Head Injury Criteria, i.e. HIC(d) value for the interior components of a vehicle to be below 1000 under certain stated conditions. In this paper, we provide a robust design approach to achieve the requirements for one such interior component, viz. an interior hard trim that covers the pillar closest to the driver's head on the left-hand side of the vehicle.     

改进电容测微仪稳定性的技术措施

简述了JDC系列精密电容测微仪的组成原理,介绍了为改进仪器的稳定性而对稳压电源、主放大器、参比电容、传感器、滤波电路等组成环节所采取的一些技术措施。     

The safety climate and its relationship to safety practices, safety of the work environment and occupational accidents in eight wood-processing companies

Employees continuously observe their work environment and the actions of their fellow workers and superiors, and they use such observations as a basis for the creation of cognitive models associated with safety. These models regulate their actions in the workplace and thus have an influence on safety. This study attempts to define the structure of the safety climate as perceived by workers and the correlations between the safety climate, on the one hand, and the safety practices of the company, the safety level of the work environment and occupational accidents on the other. The variables used in this study were the same as those employed in two previous Finnish safety climate studies carried out in the plywood industry, shipyards, the forestry industry, building construction and stevedoring. The safety climate was measured by means of a questionnaire. Workers from four sawmills, two plywood factories and two parquet plants participated. The total number of participants was 508 in 1990 and 548 in 1993. The variables formed four factors, whose contents and reliabilities closely resembled the results obtained in the earlier studies. These results indicate that the structure of the safety climate among Finnish workers is quite stable. The safety climate correlated both with the safety level of the work environment and with the safety practices of the company, but the correlation between the safety climate and the safety of the work environment was stronger. This result differs from those of the previous studies, in which the safety climate was defined specifically in terms of an individual’s perceptions of the safety practices of the company and of the behavior of other employees. The two safety climate factors that described a company’s attitudes to safety and its safety precautions correlated with the accident rates. The better the safety climate of the company was, the lower was the accident rate. Four companies with an accident rate below the average for the wood-processing industry had a better safety climate than four similar companies with an accident rate above the average.     

Multi-criteria risk analysis to improve safety in manufacturing systems

The drive to lower operating costs and improve manufacturing efficiency has led many manufacturing companies to implement different methodologies in order to identify a suitable risk assessment model. So, the concern for safety in industrial activities, both inside the establishments and in their surroundings, has a crucial role. As a result, many laws, regulations and risk analysis techniques are well adapted to industry needs since they were developed for its purpose. However increasing safety is often difficult, especially when you have already obtained good results, so the aim of our paper is the proposal of a new methodological approach called the safety improve risk assessment (SIRA) by integrating the conventional aspects of the popular failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) procedure with economic considerations in order to take into account the risk and to minimise the total safety costs by defining a specific index called total risk priority number (TRPN) index. The index proposed is based on the improved risk priority number (IRPN) and the analytic network process (ANP), a multi-criteria decision-making technique.     

Evaluation of a program to enhance young drivers’ safety in Israel

Young drivers in Israel, as in other parts of the world, are involved in car crashes more than any other age group. The graduated driver licensing system in Israel requires that all new drivers be accompanied by an experienced driver whenever they drive for the first 3 months after obtaining a driving license. In an effort to make the accompanied driving phase more effective, a novel program which targets both young drivers and their parents was initiated in 2005. The program administers a personal meeting with the young driver and the accompanying parent scheduled for the beginning of the accompanied driving phase. In this meeting guidance is given regarding best practices for undertaking the accompanied driving, as well as tips for dealing with in-vehicle parent–teen dynamics. Through 2008, almost 130,000 families of young drivers have participated in the program.     

Motor vehicle and roadway factors in pedestrian and bicyclist injuries: an examination based on emergency department data.

Information on 2558 persons treated for injuries incurred while bicycling or walking was collected from eight hospital emergency departments over approximately a one-year time period. The emergency departments represented a mix of urban and suburban/rural sites in three states--California, New York, and North Carolina. The data were collected on special survey forms and included detailed information about the location of the injury event. Results show that, overall, 70% of the reported bicycle injury events and 64% of the reported pedestrian injury events did not involve a motor vehicle. In addition, 31% of the bicyclists and 53% of the pedestrians were injured in non-roadway locations such as sidewalks, parking lots, or off-road trails. Although pedestrians and bicyclists struck by motor vehicles in the roadway were generally the most seriously injured, they represented less than a third of the reported cases. Increased knowledge of non-roadway and non-motor vehicle pedestrian and bicyclist injury events can contribute to more effective program and countermeasure development to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety.     

Use of failure rate databases and process safety performance measurements to improve process safety

Employing equipment reliability databases can generate a process of continual improvement. This paper suggests a methodology that uses equipment reliability databases, and a process of benchmarking to establish a continual improvement procedure by learning "how others are doing it". A simple decision-making procedure is suggested too, to assist in prioritizing the processes/equipment that are considered to be improved as well as a methodology to measure the improvement.     

Application of grey relational analysis for evaluating road traffic safety measures: advanced driver assistance systems against infrastructure redesign

Two of the main approaches to improve traffic safety are extensive redesign of the physical road infrastructure and large-scale implementation of advanced driver assistance systems. These approaches are to a large extent substitutes, but also partly complementary. Evaluation of alternative strategic investments in either of the two, and combinations, is complicated by limitations in availability, reliability and accuracy of data. Some of the evaluation methods most commonly used in transportation research are reviewed, and a method that is rather unknown in the western world and that is especially capable of dealing with part of these limitations is introduced. Grey relational analysis (GRA) - a normalisation-based method - provides a simple and transparent evaluation procedure from which a clear-cut ranking order of strategies derives. The application of GRA to the stated evaluation problem is illustrated with a case study in The Netherlands     

Vehicle impoundment regulations as a means for reducing traffic-violations and road accidents in Israel

The vehicle impoundment sanction in Israel is applicable to several violations, and authorizes police officers to impound a vehicle for period of 30 days, in addition to license suspension. This study examined the effects of vehicle impoundment on traffic-violations and road accidents in Israel, using both subjective and objective measures. A telephone survey was administered to 378 impounded drivers, examining their knowledge and support of the impoundment penalty, as well as the impoundment's effect on their daily life and subsequent driving behaviors. Survey results indicated most impounded drivers did not recognize the violations to which impoundment applies. Respondents described the impoundment experience as one, which interfered with a variety of daily life aspects, and eventually lead them to the adoption of safer driving behaviors. Additionally, data analysis of police records was performed on 1549 impounded drivers and 1354 controls with matching violations performed prior to the application of the impoundment regulation, comparing accident and traffic-violations involvement in the subsequent year. Results indicated that impoundment failed to yield a significant effect over subsequent accident involvement, compared to previous sanctions. A comparison of subsequent traffic-violations indicated lower rates of violations following impoundment as compared with previous sanctions. Specifically, drivers whose vehicle was impounded were less likely to commit traffic violations in the following year than drivers subjected to other sanctions. The results are explained according to psychological behavioral theories of punishment effectiveness. These findings provide further support for impoundment as a deterrent for several traffic-violations.     

ＷＴＯ／ＴＢＴ与我国技术监督情报工作

随着我国加入WTO,我国对外开放将近入一个新的阶段,技术监督情报部门如何把握机遇、弄清WTO的规则,合理定位、选择发展,开展有特色的信息服务,就显得越来越重要。