Accident; analysis and prevention
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Severe-to-fatal head injuries in motor vehicle environments were analyzed using the United States Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network database for the years 1997-2006. Medical evaluations included details and photographs of injury, and on-scene, trauma bay, emergency room, intensive care unit, radiological, operating room, in-patient, and rehabilitation records. Data were synthesized on a case-by-case basis. ⋯ Because head injuries occur at regulatory DeltaV in modern vehicles and angular accelerations are not directly incorporated in crashworthiness standards, these findings from the largest dataset in literature, offer a field-based rationale for including rotational kinematics in injury assessments. In addition, it may be necessary to develop injury criteria and evaluate dummy biofidelity based on contact locations as this parameter depended on the impact mode. The current field-based analysis has identified the importance of both angular acceleration and contact location in head injury assessment and mitigation.
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Despite a burgeoning research effort directed at understanding the effects of age, gender, disability, group size, traffic control condition and street width on pedestrian safety and compliance rate as they cross a signalized intersection, remarkably little is known about the compliance rate at a signal controlled two-stage crossing and how pedestrians react to different weather conditions. The purpose of this study was to determine whether pedestrian behavior becomes more risky in inclement weather through the investigation of street crossing behavior and compliance under different weather and road surface conditions at a busy two-stage crossing. Road crossing behavior was filmed at one eight-lane divided road strip at a downtown site in Toronto metropolitan area. ⋯ The designs of signal timing and configuration of the center refuge island also adversely influenced pedestrian behavior at this crossing, and adverse weather conditions further exacerbated the noncompliance rate. This paper presents new information on compliance rate at a two-stage crossing that emphasizes the need to consider the influence of traffic signal design and weather conditions on pedestrians' behavior. More studies are needed to develop traffic control techniques to allow pedestrians to cross wide two-stage crossings in safety.
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This study examined the effects of age and driving experience on the ability to detect hazards while driving; namely, hazard perception. Studies have shown that young-inexperienced drivers are more likely than experienced drivers to suffer from hazard perception deficiencies. However, it remains to be determined if this skill deteriorates with advancing age. ⋯ Moreover, while approaching T intersections older and experienced drivers fixated more towards the merging road on the right while young-inexperienced drivers fixated straight ahead, paying less attention to potential vehicles on the merging road. The study suggests that driving experience improves drivers' awareness of potential hazards and guides drivers' eye movements to locations that might embed potential risks. Furthermore, advanced age hardly affects older drivers' ability to perceive hazards, and older drivers are at least partially aware of their age-related limitations.
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Whether the safest roundabout design for cyclists is to separate cycle crossings or integrate cyclists with motorists is an extensively discussed issue. Studies using accident statistics indicate that a separated cycle crossing is the safest for high motor vehicle volumes. However, the results have not been satisfyingly explained. ⋯ The yielding rules are more ambiguous in the separated roundabout, contributing to a lower yielding rate to cyclists and a lower trust in the other road user's willingness to yield. Situations in the separated roundabout with the lowest yielding rate to cyclists occur when the motorist exits the roundabout at the same time as cyclists are riding in the circulating direction and hence coming from the right. However, most of the accidents in separated roundabouts occur while cyclists are riding against the circulating direction, both when motorists enter and exit the roundabouts.
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To summarise the extent to which narrative text fields in administrative health data are used to gather information about the event resulting in presentation to a health care provider for treatment of an injury, and to highlight best practise approaches to conducting narrative text interrogation for injury surveillance purposes. ⋯ Manual review and coding approaches, text search methods, and statistical tools have been utilised to extract data from narrative text and translate it into useable, detailed injury event information. These techniques can and have been applied to administrative datasets to identify specific injury types and add value to previously coded injury datasets. Only a few studies thoroughly described the methods which were used for text mining and less than half of the studies which were reviewed used/described quality assurance methods for ensuring the robustness of the approach. New techniques utilising semi-automated computerised approaches and Bayesian/clustering statistical methods offer the potential to further develop and standardise the analysis of narrative text for injury surveillance.