Accident; analysis and prevention
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Persuading drivers to refrain from speeding: Effects of message sidedness and regulatory fit.
Building on regulatory fit theory (Higgins, 2000, 2005), we tested whether two-sided ads were more effective than one-sided ads in changing intentions toward driving behavior when message recipients were high in assessment orientation rather than locomotion orientation. In one study either a locomotion or an assessment orientation were situationally induced (Study 1) and in another study these different orientations were chronic predispositions (Study 2). ⋯ There was also evidence that the fit effect on intentions to comply was mediated by strength of engagement with the message. Implications for persuasion concerning driving behaviors are discussed.
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A longitudinal study was conducted to investigate the effects of injury type and discharge placement on mortality, falls, hospital admissions, and changes in activities of daily living (ADLs) over a 12-month period among older fallers. Of 762 community-dwelling people aged 65 years or older who visited an emergency department (ED) of a general hospital in Taiwan due to a fall, 273 sustained a hip fracture, 157 had a vertebral fracture, 47 had a distal forearm fracture, 102 had a traumatic brain injury, and 183 had soft-tissue injuries. Results showed that, compared to patients with a soft-tissue injury, those with TBI had significantly higher risks of dying (rate ratio (RR)=3.59) and hospital admissions (RR=3.23) and better improvement in ADLs (1.93 points) at 6 months post-injury, and those who sustained a hip fracture (4.26 and 4.41 points), a vertebral fracture (3.81 and 3.83 points), or a distal-forearm fracture (2.80 and 2.80 points) had significantly better improvement in ADLs at 6 and 12 months post-injury. ⋯ In conclusion, among the five major fall injury types in older people, TBIs result in the highest risk of death and hospital admissions, while hip and vertebral fractures exhibited the largest improvement during the first year after injury. Additionally, nursing home care may be associated with increased risks of death and hospital admissions than home care. In addition to primary prevention of falls, further research to investigate mechanisms leading to TBIs during a fall is needed to facilitate effective secondary fall-prevention programs for older people.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Safety effects of permanent running lights for bicycles: A controlled experiment.
Making the use of daytime running lights mandatory for motor vehicles is generally documented to have had a positive impact upon traffic safety. Improving traffic safety for bicyclists is a focal point in the road traffic safety work in Denmark. In 2004 and 2005 a controlled experiment including 3845 cyclists was carried out in Odense, Denmark in order to examine, if permanent running lights mounted to bicycles would improve traffic safety for cyclists. ⋯ The study shows that use of permanent bicycle running lights reduces the occurrence of multiparty accidents involving cyclists significantly. In the study the bicycle accidents were recorded trough self-reporting on the Internet. Possible shortcomings and problems related to this accident recording are discussed and analysed.
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Traffic fatalities and injuries constitute a major global public health problem and the United States has fallen behind other developed countries in traffic safety. Yet, New York City stands out as a traffic safety model in the nation with its low fatality rate and its significant reductions in various types of crashes. This study develops a safety framework that considers three principal axes that affect crashes: why, who, and where. ⋯ The various safety countermeasures implemented in New York City considered all three important dimensions in the safety framework: why, who, and where. The study suggests these strategies are likely to contribute to the large reductions in crashes in New York City. We also demonstrate that a rigorous quasi-experimental design can be readily deployed in transportation safety evaluation studies.
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Freeway traffic accidents are complicated events that are influenced by multiple factors including roadway geometry, drivers' behavior, traffic conditions and environmental factors. Among the various factors, crash occurrence on freeways is supposed to be strongly influenced by the traffic states representing driving situations that are changed by road geometry and cause the change of drivers' behavior. This paper proposes a methodology to investigate the relationship between traffic states and crash involvements on the freeway. ⋯ By integrating freeway crash occurrence and traffic data over a three-year period, we obtained the crash involvement rate for each traffic state. The results show that crash involvement rate in BN, BQ, and CT states are approximately 5 times higher than the one in FF. The proposed method shows promise to be used for various safety performance measurement including hot spot identification and prediction of the number of crash involvements on freeway sections.