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Farm tractor accidents are a frequent cause of death for people in agricultural field of work. The aim of this study was to evaluate the characteristics of the fatal farm tractor accidents, as well as the most significant types of injuries and causes of death. Research is based on epidemiological criteria of subjects, traffic participation, cause of death, distribution of injury, outliving period and toxicological details. The study included 22 (4.2%) farm tractor related fatalities out of all 525 subjects who died from sustained injuries or complications of the injuries sustained in road traffic accidents. The highest number of deaths was reported in men in 95.5%. The highest percentage died of bleeding out (41%), while in 18% of cases, complications that occurred during the outliving period were the cause of death. Analyzing injuries through organ systems, it is observed that the highest number of farm tractor drivers had a chest injury (90%), and the most common chest injury was a rib fracture (82%). When determining the outliving period, the highest number of fatal farm tractor drivers died at the scene of accidents (68.2%). Of all of the subjects, 32% were under the influence of alcohol, while 23% had blood alcohol concentration level greater than 0.5 ‰. The high mortality of farm tractor drivers can be reduced by introducing a mandatory rollover protective structures system and the use of a seat belt in farm tractors with cabs, which would reduce the possibility of the driver falling out of the farm tractor seat and additional injuries due to rollover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Notas Económicas: Revista da Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra is the property of Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Potential adversary and maliciously-behaved vehicles may cause traffic chaos or even lead to traffic accidents (particularly on traffic congestion crossroads). To address this issue, a novel security scheme is proposed for facilitating an efficient vehicular communication by employing a quantum secret sharing method. In the proposed scheme, the traffic control information is broadcasted regularly and shared among vehicles to reduce traffic congestion, and thus avoiding traffic accidents. Finally, we also demonstrate the superiority performance of our proposed scheme through theoretical and numerical simulation analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During rescue missions, transferring injured people from accident scenes to rescue sites is considered crucial and time-sensitive. In particular, a one-second delay could put more lives in danger. Though ambulances are commonly equipped with standard siren devices, such siren signals are not recognized by traffic light controllers. Therefore, rescue missions could be delayed at intersections due to an urgency-unaware traffic light control system. In the worst case, pile-up accidents could also happen when the ambulances lawfully ignores the traffic lights. This paper proposes A2T to enhance the efficiency of rescue missions, by establishing a communication mechanism among ambulances and infrastructures (e.g., traffic light controllers). Thailand, which had the highest road traffic death rate in the world in 2015, is selected as a use case in this paper. A2T promotes information sharing between ambulances and traffic light controllers along the rescue path in advance. Such information, including speeds, locations, and emergency routes, allows the traffic light controllers to launch a prioritized green traffic light accordingly. This allows the ambulances to go through any road intersection efficiently and safely. Our comprehensive performance evaluation shows that A2T achieves 100 percent waiting time reduction for the ambulances, with only 2.48 percent increase in delay of other vehicles at the intersections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although roundabouts have been used at many locations around the world, the safety of roundabouts under different conditions has not been fully understood. In this study, 17 roundabouts in five cities in Arizona were evaluated, out of which 11 are single lane and six are double lane. Most of the intersections of single-lane roundabouts were controlled by two-way stop signs before roundabout conversion, whereas most of the intersections of double-lane roundabouts were controlled by traffic signals. Accident data were collected and broken down into five categories: damage without injury, minor injury, nonincapacitating injury, incapacitating injury, and fatality. Equal number of years were used before and after the roundabout conversion at each location. The average rates of accidents, damages without injury, injuries and fatalities per year and per million vehicles were evaluated. It was found that single-lane roundabouts reduced the accident rate, whereas double-lane roundabouts increased the accident rate. The results also showed that single- and double-lane roundabout conversions reduced the severity levels of accidents. Considering accident rate and severity level, warrants need to be developed for roundabout conversion and number of roundabout lanes under different traffic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major international automakers have considered the deployment of the 5.9 GHz dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) on their vehicle fleets for wireless connectivity. DSRC-enabled vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication through broadcast of basic safety messages enables safety applications for crash warning and avoidance. However, in dense traffic conditions as the V2V deployment scales up, the resultant channel load increases and leads to channel congestion and may adversely affect the performance of the safety applications. The Society of Automotive Engineers J2945/1 standard that builds atop Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11p and IEEE 1609 standards provides the minimum performance requirements for V2V safety communications. Specifically, it provides a congestion control protocol for transmission rate and power adaptations to achieve robust performance in dense vehicular networks. The primary contribution of this paper is that using a congestion generation testbed that emulates channel congestion including a large number of remote vehicles, we can validate and test any V2V equipped vehicle for compliance with the J2945/1 standard. Our paper also demonstrates that under heavy congestion, even with 600 ms of inter-transmit time, a moving vehicle can be tracked to a lane-level accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are a complex phenomenon caused by nonlinear combination and interaction of man, vehicles, road, and environment. Aim: This study aims to find out the outcome and severity of RTI in a district of West Bengal, India. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional study was conducted among inpatients of Departments of Surgery and Orthopedics of Bankura Sammilani Medical College and Hospital, West Bengal, India. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted for 1 year interviewing 295 RTI selected through scheduled sampling. Information pertaining to demographic and correlates of RTI was collected by face to face and over telephone using semi-structured questionnaire. Nine-item Simplified Injury Severity Scale (SISS) was used to assess injury severity. Internal consistency of SISS scale was showed by Cronbach's alpha and association with the correlates was done by Mann–Whitney U-test. Statistical Analysis Used: With SPSS version 22.0, binary logistic regression, and Mann–Whitney U-test. Results and Conclusion: Fatal outcome in terms of death and permanent disability was 34.24% and they had higher marginally significant (P = 0.06), SISS score (45.17 ± 12.59). Participants with absence of protective devices, presence of comorbidities, drunkenness, with accidents over national highways, in-between 6 am and 6 pm, mechanized two-wheelers, and nonreceipt of first aid were found to have significantly high scores compared to their counterpart. SISS, as a proxy measure of severity assessment, could throw a light on it and awareness generation and legislative stringency might be need of the hour for the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) is one of the major public health problems faced by both developed and developing countries. Aims: 1. To describe the trends of RTA, the incidence of injured and death rates due to RTAs in Sikkim during 2001-2014. 2. To find out the significant association between the sexwise differentials in injured and deaths rates, types of the Vehicles involved in RTAs in Sikkim during 2001-2014. Materials and method: A retrospective analysis was done using the secondary data published by Government of India. Results : A total of 2646 Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) were reported during 2001 to 2014. The highest RTA occurred in 2009 accounting 564 (27.9%) of total RTAs. The minimum road accidents were reported in 2006 but it's contributed the maximum 226 death rate due to road accidents per 100 cases. Of these 2646 accidents, 3964 persons were injured and 925 persons were died during 2001 to 2014. The rates of injured and deaths per 100 cases of RTA were 40 and 35 respectively during the period. The proportions of male injured and killed due to RTAs were 73% and 75% while females contributed 27% and 25% respectively though it was not significance. The ratio of male injured to females was 2.7:1 while for deaths it was 3.1:1. Jeep accident 437 (67%) was the highest among the various types of vehicles involved in RTAs which was statistically significance. Conclusions: There was an increased trend in the incidence of RTAs in the state. However, it can b reduce to a minimum level by improving the conditions of the roads, giving proper awareness to the community and by framing suitable traffic rules and regulations by the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A retrospective study of road traffic deaths was conducted from 01-01-2015 to 30-06- 2016 at Gulbarga institute of medical sciences, kalaburagi. Out of 570 autopsies conducted during the study period, RTAs related deaths accounted for 119 cases. Road traffic accidents are increasing in an alarming rate throughout the world. Thereby it poses itself as a major epidemiological and medico-legal problem. victims in RTA'S sustain varieties of injuries, which are fatal or dangerous to life. Hence the present study was conducted to know the injuries in victims of fatal RTA'S in relation to victims age and sex, type of victim and type of offending vehicle and suggests suitable preventive measures to reduce burden of mortality due to road accidents. In addition, an attempt also made to know the percentage of cause of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing the number of fatalities is a key objective of road safety policy. As road safety improvements in Europe have decreased the number of fatalities, more focus has been directed to seriously injured. The aim of this study is to compare the different definitions of and international data on seriously injured, combine this data with fatality data and investigate the results and the conclusions for road safety policy. Particularly, a combined indicator of killed and seriously injured (KSI) is used in analysis. For comparing the amount of seriously injured in different countries, the definition recommended by the European Commission, the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS) level 3+ was adapted. Based on the comparisons the use of a KSI indicator is recommended as it widens overall awareness of road safety performance. When analysing the amount of seriously injured and KSI, the results highlight bicycle, moped and motorcycle users compared to fatalities as an indicator. As sustainable mobility and urbanisation shape the future transport systems and increase the importance of cycling, adopting KSI indicator is increasingly important, but further research is needed to identify the best practices and define guidelines for gathering, reporting and analysing international data on seriously injured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time crowdsourced maps, such as Waze provide timely updates on traffic, congestion, accidents, and points of interest. In this paper, we demonstrate how lack of strong location authentication allows creation of software-based Sybil devices that expose crowdsourced map systems to a variety of security and privacy attacks. Our experiments show that a single Sybil device with limited resources can cause havoc on Waze, reporting false congestion and accidents and automatically rerouting user traffic. More importantly, we describe techniques to generate Sybil devices at scale, creating armies of virtual vehicles capable of remotely tracking precise movements for large user populations while avoiding detection. To defend against Sybil devices, we propose a new approach based on co-location edges, authenticated records that attest to the one-time physical co-location of a pair of devices. Over time, co-location edges combine to form large proximity graphs that attest to physical interactions between devices, allowing scalable detection of virtual vehicles. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach using large-scale simulations, and how they can be used to dramatically reduce the impact of the attacks. We have informed Waze/Google team of our research findings. Currently, we are in active collaboration with Waze team to improve the security and privacy of their system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication enables exchanging information between vehicles by broadcasting safety and beacon messages. Safety applications based on a so-called dedicated short-range communication, which are one of the main applications of V2V, require a very strict network performance for safety messages. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the beacon rate on the network performance of safety messages and develop an optimization problem to recommend optimal beacon rates based on a utility maximization framework. The message utility is constructed to account for the reliability requirements of safety messages and maintain the accuracy of neighborhood information collected by beacons. Specifically, we obtain the relationship between the optimal beacon rate and the system parameters. Our results show that the optimal beacon rates can meet the requirements of safety applications and improve the network performance up to 40%. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background Recent developments in Western Australia's economy including widespread traffic congestion as well as road safety issues are increasingly becoming prominent. Previous studies relied on traditional statistical methods to investigate patterns and characteristics of motor vehicle crashes. Although useful, statistical analysis alone is incapable of providing a spatial context and is therefore unable to associate existing crash characteristics with a spatial distribution. Aims To identify concentrations or “hotspots” of articulated heavy vehicle crashes in WA between the years 2001–2013, by using a spatial analysis approach. Methods Spatial modelling and spatio-temporal analytical methods such as Emerging Hotspots were used to identify emerging hotspots on specific roads in Western Australia using the Integrated Road Information System (IRIS). Results The results suggest that the majority of articulated heavy vehicles crashes occurred in the vicinity or within the Perth metropolitan area. Based on spatial-temporal trend analyses, our findings highlight some regions that are emerging as areas of interest. Discussion This study was one of the first attempts to adopt a spatial analysis approach in studying heavy-vehicle crashes in Western Australia. Applying spatial methodologies to road safety data has the potential of obtaining previously undiscovered insights, which can be extended further, and provide future avenues to research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accidents between right-turning motor vehicles and straight-ahead cyclists are one of the most common accident types leading to cyclist injuries at signalised junctions in Denmark. A before-after safety evaluation of applying staggered stop lines in 189 arms at 123 signalised junctions is presented. The evaluation accounts for long-term accident trends and changes in motor vehicle traffic volumes. Applying staggered stop lines gives no decline in accidents between right-turning motor vehicles and straight-ahead cyclists. However, there is a statistical tendency to a decline of these right-turn accidents involving heavy vehicles. There are several questions about factors leading to right-turn accidents that cannot be answered by recorded accident data. A study of conflicting behaviour focuses on factors leading to conflicts. Video observations have been carried out in 10 arms at signalised junctions. A total of 45 situations with conflicting behaviour between right-turning motor vehicles and straight-ahead cyclists have been investigated and compared to a reference group of simultaneous arrivals. The relative risk is lowest when both parties stop on red before entering the junction. Upon simultaneous arrival of both parties at a green light, the relative risk is highest. Cyclists tend to have a higher relative risk of being involved in conflicts if they; a) ride through on yellow, b) have a time distance of at least 2 seconds to other cyclists, c) wear a black jacket, and/or d) arrive at the junction at a speed of at least 25 km/h. Much less can be said about the motor vehicles or their drivers on the basis of these video observations, but motor vehicles stopping in the cycle crossing in order to yield to pedestrians or cyclists have a higher relative risk of being involved in conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a traffic sign detection method for signs close to road intersections and roundabouts, such as stop and yield (give way) signs. The proposed method relies on statistical templates built using color information for both segmentation and classification. The segmentation method uses the RGB-normalized (ErEgEb) color space for ROIs (Regions of Interest) generation based on a chromaticity filter, where templates at 10 scales are applied to the entire image. Templates consider the mean and standard deviation of normalized color of the traffic signs to build thresholding intervals where the expected color should lie for a given sign. The classification stage employs the information of the statistical templates over YCbCr and ErEgEb color spaces, for which the background has been previously removed by using a probability function that models the probability that the pixel corresponds to a sign given its chromaticity values. This work includes an analysis of the detection rate as a function of the distance between the vehicle and the sign. Such information is useful to validate the robustness of the approach and is often not included in the existing literature. The detection rates, as a function of distance, are compared to those of the well-known Viola-Jones method. The results show that for distances less than 48 m, the proposed method achieves a detection rate of 87.5% and 95.4% for yield and stop signs, respectively. For distances less than 30 m, the detection rate is 100% for both signs. The Viola-Jones approach has detection rates below 20% for distances between 30 and 48 m, and barely improves in the 20-30 m range with detection rates of up to 60%. Thus, the proposed method provides a robust alternative for intersection detection that relies on statistical color-based templates instead of shape information. The experiments employed videos of traffic signs taken in several streets of Santiago, Chile, using a research platform implemented at the Robotics and Automation Laboratory of PUC to develop driver assistance systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The safety of river-crossing tunnels is an important aspect of urban road traffic systems. Previous studies concerning traffic safety mainly focused on urban roads. Given the absence of a number of variables, such as speed and real-time traffic volume, in traffic accident databases, the traffic safety of urban river-crossing tunnels has rarely been studied. This study used the microscopic traffic flow simulation software, VISSIM, to analyse the factors influencing the traffic safety of urban river-crossing tunnels. 12 simulation models based on 12 river-crossing tunnels in Shanghai were established. An exponential model for the speed standard deviation and accident rate was then constructed by calculating the speed standard deviation of the 12 tunnel models. Varied parameters of gratitude, speed limit, heavy vehicle ratio, and traffic flow characteristics were used to set different simulation scenarios in VISSIM. Results show that speed standard deviation is negatively correlated with gradient and heavy vehicle ratio, where a smaller gradient and fewer heavy vehicles are safer. Under different traffic volumes, the speed standard deviation first increases and then decreases with the increasing speed limit. From the perspective of traffic safety, a small speed limit is recommended; however, the number of passing vehicles per hour is reduced. Thus, a middle speed limit between 55 km/h and 60 km/h is recommended to balance the safety and efficiency of traffic. The findings in this study provide prospective information with which to optimize the design and operation of urban river-crossing tunnels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicles are being viewed with scepticism in their ability to improve safety and the driving experience. A critical issue with automated driving at this stage of its development is that it is not yet reliable and safe. When automated driving fails, or is limited, the autonomous mode disengages and the drivers are expected to resume manual driving. For this transition to occur safely, it is imperative that drivers react in an appropriate and timely manner. Recent data released from the California trials provide compelling insights into the current factors influencing disengagements of autonomous mode. Here we show that the number of accidents observed has a significantly high correlation with the autonomous miles travelled. The reaction times to take control of the vehicle in the event of a disengagement was found to have a stable distribution across different companies at 0.83 seconds on average. However, there were differences observed in reaction times based on the type of disengagements, type of roadway and autonomous miles travelled. Lack of trust caused by the exposure to automated disengagements was found to increase the likelihood to take control of the vehicle manually. Further, with increased vehicle miles travelled the reaction times were found to increase, which suggests an increased level of trust with more vehicle miles travelled. We believe that this research would provide insurers, planners, traffic management officials and engineers fundamental insights into trust and reaction times that would help them design and engineer their systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has emerged as a possible alternative fuel for freight railroads in the United States, due to the availability of cheap domestic natural gas and continued pursuit of environmental and energy sustainability. A safety concern regarding the deployment of LNG-powered trains is the risk of breaching the LNG tender car (a special type of hazardous materials car that stores fuel for adjacent locomotives) in a train accident. When a train is derailed, an LNG tender car might be derailed or damaged, causing a release and possible fire. This paper describes the first study that focuses on modeling the probability of an LNG tender car release incident due to a freight train derailment on a mainline. The model accounts for a number of factors such as FRA track class, method of operation, annual traffic density level, train length, the point of derailment, accident speed, the position(s) of the LNG tender(s) in a train, and LNG tender car design. The model can be applied to any specified route or network with LNG-fueled trains. The implementation of the model can be undertaken by the railroad industry to develop proactive risk management solutions when using LNG as an alternative railroad fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This work focuses on macroscopic traffic flow model calibration and validation of large freeway networks. • An intensive literature review is presented on the subject to determine the strengths and weaknesses of various technical paths, and figure out a viable roadmap for future studies. • The paper proposes a benchmarking framework concerning some of the key factors about macroscopic traffic flow model calibration and validation, which including congestion tracking, traffic flow inhomogeneity, adverse weather conditions and accidents, capacity drop, scattering, hysteresis, stop-and-go waves, and traffic heterogeneity. • The paper presents comprehensive results of model calibration and validation concerning key factors included in the benchmarking framework as stated above. • Works of the same focus were not reported before. Macroscopic traffic flow models are of paramount importance to traffic surveillance and control. Before their employments in applications, the models need to be calibrated and validated against real traffic data. The model calibration determines an optimal set of model parameters that minimizes the discrepancy between the modeling results and real traffic data. The model validation is furthermore performed to corroborate the accuracy of a calibrated model using data other than used for calibration. The model calibration aims to reflect traffic reality, while model validation focuses on the prediction of future traffic using calibrated models. This paper delivers a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art works on macroscopic model calibration and validation, proposes a benchmarking framework on traffic flow modeling, and has conducted a large number of case studies based on the framework using macroscopic traffic flow model METANET with respect to the urban expressway network in Shanghai. In comparison to previous works, quite more comprehensive results on model calibration have been presented in this paper, in consideration of congestion tracking, traffic flow inhomogeneity, capacity drop, stop-and-go waves, scattering, adverse weather conditions, and accidents. The paper has also reported many results of model validation with respect to the same field examples. The results demonstrate that METANET is able to model complex traffic flow dynamics in large-scale freeway networks with sufficient accuracy. The paper is closed with discussion on limitations and future works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates the safety effect of illumination on accidents at highway-rail grade crossings in the United States, using data from exhaustive data from Federal Railroad Administration database covering the period 2002-2011. Using mixed logit modeling approach, the study explores the determinants of driver injury severity at unlighted highway-rail grade crossings compared with lighted highway-rail grade crossings in the United States. Several key issues are explored including availability of relevant highway-rail grade crossing accident inventory data; relevant data element structures; specification and estimation of models to estimate driver's injury severity with lighting and without lighting; and techniques to interpret model parameters. Overall, highway-rail grade crossing lighting improves safety by reducing the probability of high-level injury severity through improvements in driver's visibility compared with unlighted intersections. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Teenage drivers are more likely to be involved in severely incapacitating and fatal crashes compared to adult drivers. Moreover, because two thirds of urban vehicle miles traveled are on signal-controlled roadways, significant research efforts are needed to investigate intersection-related teenage driver injury severities and their contributing factors in terms of driver behavior, vehicle-infrastructure interactions, environmental characteristics, roadway geometric features, and traffic compositions. Therefore, this study aims to explore the characteristic differences between teenage and adult drivers in intersection-related crashes, identify the significant contributing attributes, and analyze their impacts on driver injury severities.Methods: Using crash data collected in New Mexico from 2010 to 2011, 2 multinomial logit regression models were developed to analyze injury severities for teenage and adult drivers, respectively. Elasticity analyses and transferability tests were conducted to better understand the quantitative impacts of these factors and the teenage driver injury severity model's generality.Results: The results showed that although many of the same contributing factors were found to be significant in the both teenage and adult driver models, certain different attributes must be distinguished to specifically develop effective safety solutions for the 2 driver groups.Conclusions: The research findings are helpful to better understand teenage crash uniqueness and develop cost-effective solutions to reduce intersection-related teenage injury severities and facilitate driver injury mitigation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To reduce the severity of injuries and the number of cyclist deaths in traffic accidents, active safety devices providing cyclist detection are considered to be effective countermeasures. The features of car-to-bicycle collisions need to be known in detail to develop such safety devices.Methods: The study investigated near-miss situations captured by drive recorders installed in passenger cars. Because similarities in the approach patterns between near-miss incidents and real-world fatal cyclist accidents in Japan were confirmed, we analyzed the 229 near-miss incident data via video capturing bicycles crossing the road in front of forward-moving cars. Using a video frame captured by a drive recorder, the time to collision (TTC) was calculated from the car's velocity and the distance between the car and bicycle at the moment when the bicycle initially appeared.Results: The average TTC in the cases where bicycles emerged from behind obstructions was shorter than that in the cases where drivers had unobstructed views of the bicycles. In comparing the TTC of car-to-bicycle near-miss incidents to the previously obtained results of car-to-pedestrian near-miss incidents, it was determined that the average TTC in car-to-bicycle near-miss incidents was significantly longer than that in car-to-pedestrian near-miss incidents.Conclusions: When considering the TTC in the test protocol of evaluation for safety performance of active safety devices, we propose individual TTCs for evaluation of cyclist and pedestrian detections, respectively. In the test protocols, the following 2 scenarios should be employed: bicycle emerging from behind an unobstructed view and bicycle emerging from behind obstructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Most countries have detailed lists of traffic rules and elaborate legal regimes for penalizing drivers who break them. Previous research has suggested that drivers tend to drive more safely after receiving penalties for traffic infringements.Methods: We linked driver-level data on infringements and crashes in Queensland, Australia (1995-2010) with information on the licence histories of all drivers in the state. We used a case-crossover design to examine drivers' risk of crashing in the month following an infringement penalty. We also examined whether changes in crash risk following infringement penalties varied according to driver age and gender, type of infringement and whether the offender was at fault in a subsequent crash.Results: Drivers had higher risks of crashes following infringement penalties [odds ratio (OR) 1.32; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.29-1.36], especially crashes in which the offender was at fault (1.41; 1.36-1.46). Crash risk relative to a comparable period was particularly high for teenage drivers (1.55; 1.34-1.78) and among drivers penalized for dangerous driving (3.19; 2.52-4.03) or driving under the influence of alcohol (1.99; 1.67-2.37). The risk remained relatively high for more than 6 months after the penalty, but declined steadily over this period.Conclusions: Crash risk among drivers in Queensland was higher, not lower, following receipt of penalties for traffic infringements. Penalties themselves are unlikely to increase crash risk. A more likely explanation is that penalties (or the corresponding infringements) mark episodes of risky driving. Our findings suggest that such episodes trounce any deterrent effect penalties may produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities across the world grow and the mobility of populations increases, there has also been a corresponding increase in the number of vehicles on roads. The result of this has been a proliferation of challenges for authorities with regard to road traffic management. A consequence of this has been congestion of traffic, more accidents, and pollution. Accidents are a still major cause of death, despite the development of sophisticated systems for traffic management and other technologies linked with vehicles. Hence, it is necessary that a common system for accident management is developed. For instance, traffic congestion in most urban areas can be alleviated by the real-time planning of routes. However, the designing of an efficient route planning algorithm to attain a globally optimal vehicle control is still a challenge that needs to be solved, especially when the unique preferences of drivers are considered. The aim of this paper is to establish an accident management system that makes use of vehicular ad hoc networks coupled with systems that employ cellular technology in public transport. This system ensures the possibility of real-time communication among vehicles, ambulances, hospitals, roadside units, and central servers. In addition, the accident management system is able to lessen the amount of time required to alert an ambulance that it is required at an accident scene by using a multihop optimal forwarding algorithm. Moreover, an optimal route planning algorithm (ORPA) is proposed in this system to improve the aggregate spatial use of a road network, at the same time bringing down the travel cost of operating a vehicle. This can reduce the incidence of vehicles being stuck on congested roads. Simulations are performed to evaluate ORPA, and the results are compared with existing algorithms. The evaluation results provided evidence that ORPA outperformed others in terms of average ambulance speed and travelling time. Finally, our system makes it easier for ambulance to quickly make their way through traffic congestion so that the chance of saving lives is increased., 1. Introduction The concept of a smart city is linked to a paradigm shift where interest is being directed towards proposals and technological initiatives, which seek to make cities smart [...]

• We introduce an "Hourly Risk Index" to assess fatigue-related work schedule risk. • We consider the relative risk of cumulative, time-of-day, and time-on-duty effects. • We validate with a large-scale dataset from Belgian railway traffic control centers. • The Hourly Risk Index outperforms its predecessor, the Risk Index. • Error severity is significantly related to a further increase in risk. Around-the-clock staffing in safety-critical environments calls for an accurate risk assessment of work schedules. In this paper we introduce and evaluate an hourly version of the "Risk Index", an established risk model in the UK rail industry. This "Hourly Risk Index" is the first risk-based model that allows the prediction of risk at the hourly level, and is founded on the most recent scientific insights in fatigue-related accident risk. It considers the build-up of risk over consecutive shifts, recovery during days off, quick returns, and time-of-day and time-on-duty effects. Improved understanding of hourly risk is highly relevant for both ex-ante (staff rostering) and ex-post (accident and incident analysis) evaluations. We evaluated the performance of the Hourly Risk Index by analyzing a purpose-built real-world dataset from Belgium's railway traffic control centers (containing close to 8 million round-the-clock working hours in the period 2013–2018). Results not only show that the occurrence of safety-critical errors is significantly associated with higher Hourly Risk Index values, but also that error severity is significantly related to a further increase in risk. In addition, the Hourly Risk Index outperformed the original Risk Index. Our empirical results also emphasize the importance of job demands, by indicating a higher performance of the Hourly Risk Index under conditions of low or high workload. Given these outcomes, it is currently being deployed and tested at Belgian national railways. This should allow the further refinement of the Hourly Risk Index in an iterative manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of methods for real-time crash prediction as a function of current or recent traffic and roadway conditions is gaining increasing attention in the literature. Numerous studies have modeled the relationships between traffic characteristics and crash occurrence, and significant progress has been made. Given the accumulated evidence on this topic and the lack of an articulate summary of research status, challenges, and opportunities, there is an urgent need to scientifically review these studies and to synthesize the existing state-of-the-art knowledge. This paper addresses this need by undertaking a systematic literature review to identify current knowledge, challenges, and opportunities, and then conducts a meta-analysis of existing studies to provide a summary impact of traffic characteristics on crash occurrence. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess quality, publication bias, and outlier bias of the various studies; and the time intervals used to measure traffic characteristics were also considered. As a result of this comprehensive and systematic review, issues in study designs, traffic and crash data, and model development and validation are discussed. Outcomes of this study are intended to provide researchers focused on real-time crash prediction with greater insight into the modeling of this important but extremely challenging safety issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency services were working all over the world to deal with different types of emergencies and the frequency of emergencies were increased with the passage of time. Many developing countries even don't have such services and it was difficult to estimate the scale of emergencies in those countries. Objectives: To know about the types of emergencies and to help to plan for their prevention in future. Place and duration of study: Data was collected from emergency services department 1122 in four big cities of Punjab from Nov.2004-Feb.2014. Methods: Descriptive observational study. Results: The road traffic emergencies received were 243481 in Lahore, 92367 in Faisal Abad, 52507 in Multan and33847 in Rawalpindi. Medical emergencies were 247692 in Lahore, 82910 in Faisal Abad, 112531 in Multan and 31069 in Rawalpindi. Fire incidences were 14594 in Lahore, 6369 in Faisal Abad, 3707 in Multan and 3929 in Rawalpindi. Crime incidence related emergencies were 13301 in Lahore, 15051 in Faisal Abad, 5326 in Multan and 1705 in Rawalpindi. Conclusions: Road traffic related emergencies were increased even some times more than medical emergencies. Fake calls were also in higher proportion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beneficial effects of Daytime Running Lamps (DRL) to avoid traffic accidents, especially those involving pedestrians and cyclists, have been known for some decades thanks to several pioneer studies analyzing the results yielded after the introduction of this function in some countries of the world. In spite of this proven efficacy, the question about potential negative effects related to the visual interaction between DRL and other functions in automotive lighting remain extremely important. This work describes a macro experiment carried out with 148 pedestrians in different situations involving turn indicator activation. The target of the experiment was the identification of factors influencing the Visual Reaction Time (VRT) of these observers when the turn indicator was activated in presence of lit DRL. The knowledge of these factors has a critical importance for carmakers, regulatory bodies in road and vehicle safety and drivers and pedestrians themselves, since VRT is an effective and widely used parameter in road safety to provide information about the probability of accident avoidance. Besides some vehicle and headlamp related variables found by means of an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), some other variables inherent to pedestrians characteristics such as visual defects and gender, alone or combined with DRL color (white as required by law in ECE countries or amber as allowed in USA and Canada) were found to be statistically significant using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) as exploratory analysis, and a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) for validating the results. The conclusions of this pioneer study, not previously reported in the literature, point out that there is still very much to investigate with regards to Daytime Running Lamps, their design (distance to other functions), characteristics (color of light emitted) as well as their interaction with other functions of critical importance in automotive lighting such as turn indicators, but also on the human perception of this complex interactions. Our understanding and considerations about these findings could have a deep impact on road safety and vehicle design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the accidents and incidents taking place while transporting dangerous goods by railway transport. The paper presents and considers research results indicating the way the respondents estimate the main factors related to risk in rail transport. Also, the correlation of the annual losses encountered by enterprises due to accidents and the losses caused by other factors are analysed. The work suggests recommendation measures for reducing accidents in railway transport while shipping dangerous cargoes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To identify and summarize the findings of studies describing interventions aimed at reducing road traffic injuries. Methods. An integrative systematic review without meta-analysis was performed. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) were used to synthesize the findings of the articles reviewed. The keywords "traffic accidents", "review" and "public policy" were used in isolation or combined with boolean operator "And" to search PubMed, Web of Science, SciELO, and LILACS for the period between 2006 and 2011. Results. Twenty-two studies were included in the systematic review. Of these, two described engineering strategies, two described other road safety policies, three described education strategies, and 15 described law enforcement policies. Law enforcement had the most effective immediate results. Engineering strategies proved important to promote a safe environment. Finally, education strategies had an informative role and served to support other strategies, but did not seem sufficient to promote cultural changes regarding road safety. Conclusions. Law enforcement seems to be the most effective strategy to change the behavior of drivers, especially regarding speed limits and drinking and driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Based on the Federal Railway Administration (FRA) database, approximately 62% of the collisions at highway-rail crossings occurred at locations with active controls (gate and flashing lights), followed by passive controls (cross bucks and stop signs) with approximately 28% of accidents. Method The study applied an ordered probit model to explore the determinants of driver injury severity under various control measures at highway-rail grade crossing in the United States. Results The analysis found that schedule factor (peak hour), visibility, motor vehicle speed, train speed, driver’s age, area type, traffic volume and highway pavement impact driver injury severity at both active and passive highway-rail crossings. Practical Applications For both active and passive control highway-rail grade crossings, speed control for both trains and vehicles will significantly reduce driver injury severity. However, the level of influence by vehicle speed and train speed at passive control is higher compared with active control. Paving highways at highway-rail grade crossings will also help to reduce driver injury severity at highway-rail crossing accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction:Although there have been experimental studies concerning driving and drugs, studies on the risk of antihistamines are not numerous. This is the first population-based epidemiological study concerning the association of sedating/nonsedating antihistamines and fatal traffic accidents. Methods:Car drivers (n= 428) who died in accidents before reaching the hospital and controls (n= 688) matched for accident area and driving season were studied for antihistamines in blood. At the time of the fatal road traffic accident, 6 drivers had a detectable amount of sedating antihistamines in blood, and the corresponding number for controls was 4; nonsedating antihistamines in blood were detected in 12 accident cases and 28 controls. The fatal accidents occurred between 1998 and 2002 and the information on the controls was collected between 2000 and 2002 in Finland. Results:Regarding fatal traffic accident causality, the nonsedating antihistamines proved to have a protective effect after adjusting for age and gender (relative risk = 0.40, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.20 to 0.82;P=.01). The risk of fatal traffic accident of those driving under the influence of sedating antihistamines was 1.61 (0.38 to 6.77,P=.51) times the risk of those without medication. Discussion:This preliminary study supports the protective effect of second-generation antihistamines with respect to fatal traffic accidents. Due to the small sample size the results are not conclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]