Accident; analysis and prevention
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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 tested the contribution of trust between leaders and subordinates to safety. It is suggested that leaders who create a relationship of trust with their subordinates are more likely to create a safe working environment, and to achieve higher and stronger safety-climate perceptions among their subordinates. Hence, trust should be negatively related to injuries and positively related to safety climate. ⋯ Trust was found to be negatively related to injuries and positively related both to level and strength of safety climate. Furthermore, safety-climate level was found to mediate the relationship between trust and injury rates. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effectiveness of hands-on education for correct child restraint use by parents.
This study evaluates whether a hands-on educational intervention makes a significant difference in the proper use of a child passenger restraint by a parent. The clinical trial design included a sample of 111 parents who were at least seven months pregnant and who were randomly assigned to one of two groups (56 intervention and 55 control). All participants received a free car seat and a standardized education session on the safety and use of child passenger restraints. ⋯ No secondary variable (age, education, income, or help from others) had a significant effect on the outcome. The hands-on educational intervention made a significant difference in the proper use of a child passenger restraint by a parent. This study demonstrates the value of hands-on teaching for learning how to install and use a child car seat.
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To establish the associations between pedestrian injury and explanatory variables such as vehicular characteristics, temporal trends, and road environment. ⋯ Pedestrian death remains the leading cause of fatality among urban road users in Ghana. Risk factors associated with pedestrian fatality include being hit by heavy vehicles, speeding, and roadside activities such as street hawking, jaywalking and nighttime walking. Steps which may contribute to reducing pedestrian fatalities include measures to reduce vehicles speeds in settlements, providing traffic medians and lighting streets in settlements, and discouraging street and roadside activities such as hawking.
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Clinical Trial
The development and validation of two complementary measures of drivers' hazard perception ability.
Hazard perception in driving involves a number of different processes. This paper reports the development of two measures designed to separate these processes. A Hazard Perception Test was developed to measure how quickly drivers could anticipate hazards overall, incorporating detection, trajectory prediction, and hazard classification judgements. ⋯ For the Hazard Change Detection Task, novices responded quicker than the experienced drivers, contrary to crash risk trends, and test performance did not correlate with measures of overall hazard perception. However for drivers aged 65 and over, test performance declined with age and correlated with both hazard perception and Useful Field of View. Overall we concluded that there was support for the validity of the Hazard Perception Test for all ages but the Hazard Change Detection Task might only be appropriate for use with older drivers.