Floreshussain9730
Highway-rail at-grade crossings (HRGCs) are critical locations where a railway and a roadway intersect with one another. Crashes at those locations often result in fatalities and economic and social damages due to the impacts on both road and rail users. The main purpose of countermeasures at HRGCs is to permit safe and efficient rail and highway operations.
Countermeasures at highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs) considered in this study include all traffic control devices and other warning and barrier devices at or on approaches to crossings. In general, active devices are commonly accepted as more effective countermeasures than passive devices. However, many of the previous effectiveness studies are either at the project level or were conducted without considering the before-improvement condition. This study focuses on the network-level marginal effectiveness of countermeasures on crash rate and severity levels during the 29-year study period from 1990 to 2018 by fully considering before-improvement conThe study findings indicate that adding audible devices to crossings already equipped with gates will result in a considerable annual decline in crash occurrence likelihood (0.25%). The same device installed at crossings already controlled by gates and flashing lights results in less reduction in crash occurrence likelihood of 0.14%. Moreover, adding a stop sign to the active crossing controls of gates, standard flashing lights, and audible devices will lead to a decrease in the probability of crash occurrence and severe crashes (injury and fatal). However, adding stop signs to crossings equipped only with crossbucks will increase the crash occurrence.
Driver's evasive action is closely associated with collision risk in a critical traffic event. To quantify collision risk, surrogate safety measures (SSMs) have been estimated using vehicle trajectories. However, vehicle trajectories cannot clearly capture presence and time of driver's evasive action. Thus, this study determines the driver's evasive action based on his/her use of accelerator and brake pedals, and analyzes the effects of the driver's evasive action time (i.e., duration of evasive action) on rear-end collision risk.
Fifty drivers' car-following behavior on a freeway was observed using a driving simulator. An SSM called "Deceleration Rate to Avoid Crash (DRAC)" and the evasive action time were determined for each driver using the data from the driving simulator. Each driver tested two traffic scenarios - Cars and Trucks scenarios where conflicting vehicles were cars and trucks, respectively. The factors related to DRAC were identified and their effects on DRAC were analyzed using the Generaltics are more closely related to effective evasive action in complex driving conditions. Practical Applications Based on the findings of this study, driver warning information can be developed to alert drivers to take specific evasive action that reduces collision risk in a critical traffic event. The information is likely to reduce the variability of the driver's evasive action and the speed variations among different drivers.
Driving under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) is proven to increase the risk of collisions and is most common among young drivers (ages 16 to 24). However, little is known about the specific determinants of DUIC behavior among youth, which limits the capacity to develop evidence-based prevention and intervention efforts. This study developed and evaluated a youth DUIC questionnaire, which was used to establish the DUIC determinants of young drivers.
The questionnaire was based on the theoretical framework of general deterrence and general prevention. Data obtained included demographics, past cannabis use and DUIC experiences, DUIC intention, experiences riding as a passenger with someone DUIC, knowledge and credibility of the law, attitudes towards DUIC, and social controls. The resulting questionnaire was validated for a sample of 426 young drivers in the province of Ontario, Canada. check details An ordinal regression was conducted to examine the relationships between questionnaire items and DUIC intention.
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Preventive efforts should emphasize these determinants when designing targeted strategies and interventions. Practical Applications These efforts should focus on educating the dangers and risk of a vehicle collision, that law enforcement has the capacity to apprehend and appropriately punish individuals DUIC, and that DUIC is wrong and socially unacceptable.
Many healthcare providers do not consistently implement recommendations contained in clinical guidelines on mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). As such, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created the HEADS UP to Healthcare Providers online training to promote uptake of five key recommendations in the CDC Pediatric mTBI Guideline.
Using data from modules in the CDC HEADS UP to Healthcare Providers online training, healthcare providers' self-reported knowledge and self-efficacy prior to and immediately following completion of the training was analyzed.
Improvements for 8 out of the 10 knowledge questions had a high level of practical significance. The knowledge question with the highest level of practical significance pre- to post-test improvement was for the key guideline recommendation on neuroimaging (pre-test correct 70.2%; post-test correct 87.8%; (p < 0.0001, Cohen's g = 0.39). Four out of the six questions had a self-efficacy level increase of a high level of practical significs training among healthcare providers who commonly provide care for pediatric patients with mTBI may be beneficial. Practical Applications This study highlights several factors guideline developers may take into consideration when creating an implementation tool, such as using health behavior theories, working with partners and key stakeholders, and focusing on digital-based tools.
Safety outcomes in the workplace require individual employees to perform (behave) safely in everyday duties. While the literature suggests that emotional management capabilities or traits can be positively related to individual performance in certain conditions, it is not clear how they can influence safety-related performance in high-risk work contexts. Drawing upon trait activation theory, this paper aims to examine when emotional intelligence (EI) benefits employees' safety performance. We propose that when employees receive inadequate safety training, EI is more likely to trigger their situational awareness and consequently promote their safety performance.
We collected time-lagged data from 133 full-time airplane pilots working in commercial aviation industry. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis was conducted to test the moderating effect of safety training inadequacy on the EI-situational awareness relationship. The moderated mediation model, which involves conditional indirect effects of EI ersonal attributes (e.g., EI), which organizations are less able to control. When training capacity is temporarily limited, priority might be given to those with low EI.
Inadequate safety training, as a negative situational cue, can activate individuals' EI to drive their safety-related cognitions (e.g., situational awareness) and behaviors. Effective safety training may be able to complement employees' low EI in shaping their situational awareness and safety behaviors. Practical Applications Aviation managers should monitor the adequacy and effectiveness of safety training; this could make pilots' situational awareness and safety performance depend less on personal attributes (e.g., EI), which organizations are less able to control. When training capacity is temporarily limited, priority might be given to those with low EI.
Understanding parents' concussion-related knowledge and attitudes will contribute to the development of strategies that aim to improve concussion prevention and sport safety for elementary school children. This study investigated the association between parent- and child-related factors and concussion symptom knowledge and care-seeking attitudes among parents of elementary school children (aged 5-10 years).
Four hundred parents of elementary school children completed an online questionnaire capturing parental and child characteristics; concussion symptom knowledge (25 items, range = 0-50; higher = better knowledge); and concussion care-seeking attitudes (five 7-point scale items, range = 5-35; higher = more positive attitudes). Multivariable ordinal logistic regression models identified predictors of higher score levels. Adjusted odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) excluding 1.00 were deemed statistically significant.
Select parent and child characteristics were associated with higher so reach parents with this information within various communities.
Certain elementary school parent characteristics were associated with parents' concussion symptom knowledge and care-seeking attitudes. While the findings suggest providing parents with culturally and demographically relevant concussion education might be helpful, they also emphasize the importance of ensuring education/prevention regardless of their children's sports participation. Practical Applications Pediatric healthcare providers and elementary schools offer an optimal community-centered location to reach parents with this information within various communities.
In-transport vehicles often leave the travel lane and encroach onto natural objects on the roadsides. These types of crashes are called run-off the road crashes (ROR). Such crashes accounts for a significant proportion of fatalities and severe crashes. Roadside barrier installation would be warranted if they could reduce the severity of these types of crashes. However, roadside barriers still account for a significant proportion of severe crashes in Wyoming. The impact of the crash severity would be higher if barriers are poorly designed, which could result in override or underride barrier crashes. Several studies have been conducted to identify optimum values of barrier height. However, limited studies have investigated the monetary benefit associated with adjusting the barrier heights to the optimal values. In addition, few studies have been conducted to model barrier crash cost. This is because the crash cost is a heavily skewed distribution, and well-known distributions such as linear or poison models a Transportation (WYDOT) to determine the heights of which barriers should be optimized first. Other states can follow the procedure described in this paper to upgrade their roadside barriers.
The results of optimization clearly demonstrated the benefit of optimizing the heights of road barriers around the state. Practical Applications The findings can be utilized by the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) to determine the heights of which barriers should be optimized first. Other states can follow the procedure described in this paper to upgrade their roadside barriers.
COVID-19 has disrupted daily life and societal flow globally since December 2019; it introduced measures such as lockdown and suspension of all non-essential movements. As a result, driving activity was also significantly affected. Still, to-date, a quantitative assessment of the effect of COVID-19 on driving behavior during the lockdown is yet to be provided. This gap forms the motivation for this paper, which aims at comparing observed values concerning three indicators (average speed, speeding, and harsh braking), with forecasts based on their corresponding observations before the lockdown in Greece.
Time series of the three indicators were extracted using a specially developed smartphone application and transmitted to a back-end platform between 01/01/2020 and 09/05/2020, a time period containing normal operations, COVID-19 spreading, and the full lockdown period in Greece. Based on the collected data, XGBoost was employed to identify the most influential COVID-19 indicators, and Seasonal AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models were developed for obtaining forecasts on driving behavior.
