Accident; analysis and prevention
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In late 1989, Illinois revised the length of license term and renewal requirements for older drivers. The term was shortened from 4 to 2 years for those ages 81-86 and 1 year for those ages 87 and up. A mandatory road test which had been required at renewal for all drivers ages 69 and over, was eliminated for those ages 69 to 74. ⋯ It does not appear that eliminating the road test for those ages 69 to 74 had any negative impact. On the contrary, it does not appear that the more frequent renewal period for those ages 81 and up produced any benefit compared to the control group. As the number of older drivers continue to increase into the future, the analysis of licensing requirements and their impact is important.
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Results of a field experiment in which a 35-km long stretch of road was subjected to an increase in police enforcement--mostly as stationary speed controls--are presented. A group of police officers was invited to plan and perform the enforcement based on their own experience and ideas. The level of enforcement reached a daily average of nine hours throughout an enforcement period of six weeks. ⋯ M. It is suggested that commuting drivers in the morning rush hours are most resistant to speed reduction. These results were statistically significant at alpha = 0.01.
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Change of road user attitudes is often advocated as a necessary condition for improvement of road safety. The relation between road user attitudes and accident risk is, however, not well known in road safety research. The objective of this study was to find out whether attitudes are of importance to road safety, i.e. the hypothesis is that drivers having attitudes considered correct according to the traffic code, have lower accident risk than other drivers. ⋯ When no other factor is taken into account, accident risk is found to be affected by driver attitudes. When, on the other hand, the age of drivers is taken into account, the relation between attitudes and accident risk disappears. It is concluded that age and annual mileage are more important to accident risk than are attitudes, and more knowledge of the relationship between attitudes and road accident risk is needed.
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Early attempts to assess patient outcomes in trauma hospitals included morality reviews and expert panel chart audits. More recently, a statistical methodology combining the Revised Trauma Score and Injury Severity Score has been developed (TRISS). A modification of this methodology--TRISS-like analysis--allows the inclusion of patients who have required endotracheal intubation prior to the time of arrival at the trauma hospital. ⋯ The new coefficients proved quite accurate overall in predicting outcomes, and identified one institution with significantly more deaths than would have been predicted for other hospitals in the province. Subsequently, a fourth year's data files were obtained, and used as a validation data set. The new coefficients again proved more useful than the original ones.