Accident; analysis and prevention
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This paper reports an analysis of factors influencing safety in a sample of marked pedestrian crossings in the city of Oslo, Norway. The sample consists of 159 marked pedestrian crossings where a total of 316 accidents were recorded during a period of five years. The crossings were selected for inspection because of they were, for various reasons, regarded as sub-standard. ⋯ Crossings located in four-leg junctions or roundabouts had more accidents than crossings located in three-leg junctions or on sections between junctions. A high share of pedestrians crossing the road outside the marked crossing was associated with a high number of accidents. Increased speed was associated with an increased number of accidents.
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This study investigated the effects of driving experience on hazard awareness and risk perception skills. These topics have previously been investigated separately, yet a novel approach is suggested where hazard awareness and risk perception are examined concurrently. Young, newly qualified drivers, experienced drivers, and a group of commercial drivers, namely, taxi drivers performed three consecutive tasks: (1) observed 10 short movies of real-world driving situations and were asked to press a button each time they identified a hazardous situation; (2) observed one of three possible sub-sets of 8 movies (out of the 10 they have seen earlier) for the second time, and were asked to categorize them into an arbitrary number of clusters according to the similarity in their hazardous situation; and (3) observed the same sub-set for a third time and following each movie were asked to rate its level of hazardousness. ⋯ Using hindsight, when drivers were provided with the opportunity to rate the movies' hazardousness more freely (rating task) they considered both components. Otherwise, in the categorization task, they usually chose the severity of the crash outcome as their dominant criterion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.