Accident; analysis and prevention
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Bicycle helmets reduce fatal and non-fatal head and face injuries. This study evaluated the effect of mandatory bicycle helmet legislation targeted at those less than 18 years old on helmet use for all ages in Alberta. ⋯ Bicycle helmet legislation was associated with a greater increase in helmet use among the target age group (<18). Though HP increased over 2-fold among adolescents to an estimated 63% in 2006, this percentage was approximately 30% lower than among children <13.
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This study was designed to determine the incidence rate and risk factors of missed injuries in major trauma patients in the emergency department (ED). Hospital records of all 976 trauma patients visiting the ED and admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) of a medical center in Taiwan from 2006 to 2007 were reviewed. Missed injuries were defined as those not identified in the ED but recognized later in the ICUs. ⋯ The most commonly involved body region of missed injuries was the head/neck, followed by the chest and extremities. Results of a Cox regression analysis showed that a younger age, more-severe injury, polytrauma, and the absence of soft-tissue injuries were significantly associated with missed injuries, while younger ages, more-severe injuries, and the presence of chest and pelvic injuries were also significantly associated with clinically significant missed injuries. In conclusion, a considerable number of injuries, particularly to the head/neck, may be undetected in the ED, while young people and patients with certain injury patterns such as severity levels, polytrauma, and the presence of a chest or pelvic injury are more likely to have missed injuries and/or clinically significant missed injuries.
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This study investigated (i) the prevalence of conversing on a cell phone while driving in New Zealand, (ii) respondents' perception of risk regarding this behaviour and (iii) attitudes towards legislation banning cell phone use while driving. In addition, the study examined the association between the prevalence of conversing on a cell phone and risk perception. Anonymous, self-reported, survey data was collected via the internet from 1057 drivers nationwide regarding the frequency of conversing on a cell phone, including hands-free and hand-held conversing, risk perception, views on legislation, and demographic information. A positive relationship was found between the frequency of conversing on a cell phone and risk perception; that is, as the frequency of conversing on a cell phone increased, the perceived risk of this behaviour decreased.
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On 27 August 2006 at 0606 eastern daylight time (EDT) at Bluegrass Airport in Lexington, KY (LEX), the flight crew of Comair Flight 5191 inadvertently attempted to take off from a general aviation runway too short for their aircraft. The aircraft crashed killing 49 of the 50 people on board. To better understand this accident and to aid in preventing similar accidents, we applied mathematical modeling predicting fatigue-related degradation in performance for the Air Traffic Controller on-duty at the time of the crash. ⋯ Relative to other times of day, the modeling results suggest an elevated risk of fatigue-related error, incident, or accident in the early morning due to truncated sleep from the early start and adverse circadian phase from the time of day. This in turn suggests that fatigue mitigation targeted to early morning starts might reduce fatigue risk. In summary, this study suggests that mathematical models predicting performance from sleep/wake history and circadian phase are (1) useful in retrospective accident analysis provided reliable sleep/wake histories are available for the accident personnel and, (2) useful in prospective fatigue-risk identification, mitigation, and accident prevention.
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Driver distraction represents a well-documented and growing contribution to the road safety problem. This study used a naturalistic, observational approach to examine if children in vehicles are a significant source of driving distraction. Families with children aged between 1 and 8 years drove an instrumented "study vehicle" on their regular trips for 3 weeks. ⋯ The most frequent child-related activities that drivers engaged in included: turning to look at the rear seated occupants or viewing the children using the rear-view mirror (76.4%), engaging in conversation with their children (16%), assisting their children (e.g., passing food and drink [7%]) and playing with their children (1%). Drivers spent significantly longer periods of time engaged in non-child occupant-related activities compared with child occupant-related activities and were significantly more likely to have their eyes off the forward roadway for greater than 2s while engaged in non-child occupant-related activities (14%) compared to child occupant-related activities (10%). The results suggest that drivers need to be educated about the potential crash and injury risks associated with both child occupant-related and non-child occupant-related activities while driving their vehicle.