The Effects of Life Stress and Risk-Taking Style on Risk Perception and Driver Performance

This study examined the effects of risk-taking style, stress level, and highway environment on driver performance. In Phase I, 50 subjects were assessed for risk-taking style and stress level. In Phase II, the same subjects were presented with slides of traffic situations that varied in terms of risk of accident. This was a paired comparison task in which they rank-ordered ten highway sites, producing a measure of subjective risk. No significant relationships were identified between these subjective risk judgments and objective data regarding those sites (accidents and fatalities), though this is most likely due to problems with the slide presentation. In Phase III, the subjects drove in one of two scenarios (high-risk of accident or low-risk) in a highway simulator, and six vehicle operation variables were recorded, including time spent in each zone of the scenario, lane placement, average speed and standard deviation of speed over zones, number of accidents, and steering reversals. Evaluation of these variables indicated that risk-taking style and stress were good predictors of driver performance, though not as good as the difficulty of the roadway, which accounted for 87% of the variance. Of particular importance was the interaction of high levels of stress and high risk-taking style on driver performance, causing decrements in the vehicle operation measures

Identification of general risk-management countermeasures for unsafe driving actions. Volume I: description and analysis of promising countermeasures. Final report

Notes: Report covers the period Sept 1977-Feb 1981. Contract amount $99,750National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/390/2/45772.0001.001.pd

Road safety and the role of the employer: a case study of a western multinational in Oman

Global data highlights the scale of road traffic driving harm showing 1.24 million deaths, and a further 20 to 50 million injuries annually, making it the eight-leading cause of death globally. A range of studies has shed light on the causes of such harm, its main contributing factors and the prevention strategies that can be adopted to reduce it. However, little attention has been paid to the role played by employers in preventing work-related driving harm, despite the fact work-related driving accounts for a significant proportion of the harm flowing from road accidents. This study represents an attempt to address this lack of research. The overall aim of the study was to shed new light on the role the employer can play in reducing work-related driving harm. Three supporting objectives were developed to support this aim. The first was to carry out a literature review encompassing a focus on the factors that influence road safety, both generally and in the work context, the potential role of employers in improving work-related driving, and the potential insights that can be gained into this role through findings contained in the literature on occupational health and safety management. The second was the undertaking of new empirical research focussed on the management of work-related safety, and, more particularly, its capacity to generate safety improvements and the factors that influence this capacity, through a case study. The third was to draw out the lessons from these conceptual and empirical strands of the research for current knowledge and future research regarding employer management of work-related driving. To support these aims and objectives three types of data collection was undertaken: semi-structured interviews, focus groups and descriptive statistical data on relevant performance outcomes. The study reported in this thesis has explicitly sought to address the first of these areas of weakness. The findings contribute to the current literature in three ways. Firstly, by shedding new light on the capacity of employers to take effective action to improve work-related driving safety. Secondly, by providing new evidence on the value of various type of employer road safety interventions. Thirdly, and more widely, adding to existing knowledge regarding the value of promulgated guidance on the organisational level management of road safety, and the challenges that confront the effective implementation of such approaches. In doing so, the study draws out and confirms often unacknowledged linkages between the literature on work-related road safety and that on workplace health and safety

Technologies of the operator : engineering the pilot in the U.S. and Japan, 1930-1960

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 375-398).This study examines the assemblage of scientific knowledge, engineering practices, measuring instruments, and civilian and military institutions in the U.S. and Japan that went into the construction of the machine operator as a historically situated category of person in the midtwentieth century. Over the three decades from 1930 to 1960, American psychologists, physiologists, anthropologists, and engineers produced a large body of knowledge, instruments, and techniques with which to understand, select, and train aircraft pilots. The figure of the pilot thus constructed was less of a "flier" engaged in speedy movements and adventures than of an "operator" with disciplined attention and posture. The conditions that constituted the aircraft operator were multifarious: spatial, virtual, psychological, anthropometrical, political, and cultural. I first examine the Link Trainer, a ground-based flight trainer, and explore how the meaning of "flying" shifted with the use of instrument flying technique and the experience of simulated training on the ground. Then I show how psychologists redefined flying from a problem of movement to a problem of attention in their research on pilot selection tests, especially by contrasting the validity of physiological tests and psychomotor tests. Concurrently, physical anthropologists were articulating two different ways of relating the pilot's body to flying; one was the correlation between physique and one's success as a pilot and the other was the dimensional configuration of the body in the space of the cockpit. In postwar Japan, this American notion of the pilot served as the model for Japanese pilots, who embraced American norms and conventions for flying after a long ban on aviation. Even the bodies of Japanese pilots were measured and compared with those of Americans. As the scientists and engineers in postwar America extended wartime knowledge and techniques to study various situations of machine operation, aircraft pilots also came to stand for human individuals more generally, forming the conceptual basis of human factors engineering or ergonomics. Through this expansion and generalization of the pilot, a particular type of human-the one who operates machines through displays and controls-came into being as an object of study and control.by Chihyung Jeon.Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HAST

PEWA: Place-Based and Effective Wai Monitoring for Adaptive Management

Includes the 36 page Final Report, a 23 page Presentation titled, "PEWA:Place-Based and Effective Wai Monitoring For Adaptive Management", and a 139 page Stream Monitoring Toolkit titled, "PEWA:Place-Based and Effective Wai Monitoring For Adaptive Management". The toolkit is 28 pages and is accompanied by an Appendix of resources of 111 pages.Master’s of Environmental Management (MEM) Capstone Report

Vehicle and Traffic Safety

The book is devoted to contemporary issues regarding the safety of motor vehicles and road traffic. It presents the achievements of scientists, specialists, and industry representatives in the following selected areas of road transport safety and automotive engineering: active and passive vehicle safety, vehicle dynamics and stability, testing of vehicles (and their assemblies), including electric cars as well as autonomous vehicles. Selected issues from the area of accident analysis and reconstruction are discussed. The impact on road safety of aspects such as traffic control systems, road infrastructure, and human factors is also considered

Measuring the Effectiveness of Vietnam’s National Action Plan to Increase Helmet Use among Child Motorcycle Passengers in Three Major Cities.

Motorcyclists account for 75% of the estimated 22,000 fatalities caused by road injury each year in Vietnam. Helmets, widely worn by adult motorcyclists, are a cost-effective and proven intervention. Despite legislation mandating that children 6 years and above must wear helmets, child helmet use rates in Vietnam were low. In response, AIP Foundation leveraged evidence from its previous communications campaign to advocate Vietnam’s National Traffic Safety Committee (NTSC) to issue a National Child Helmet Action Plan for all 63 provinces during 2015. As part of the action plan, AIP Foundation adapted and expanded its communications campaign design from three target cities (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Danang) to nationwide, focusing on 12 other provinces in Vietnam. The objective of this study was to evaluate the progress of the action plan toward its aim to a transformational increase in child helmet use in the 15 target cities and provinces by the end of 2015. Helmet observations at systematically sampled schools in the target provinces before and after the first phase of the action plan. The results from the final evaluation of the previous communications campaign are serving as the baseline for three target cities and post-observations will take place in April and November 2015. AIP Foundation measured baselines at the remaining 12 target provinces in March 2015 and will conduct a post-observation in November 2015. If funding is available, an additional post-observation will take place in all 15 target cities/provinces in November 2016 to assess the sustainability of the action plan. Average helmet wearing rates increased from 38% across the three target cities in March 2014 to 69% in April 2015. Hanoi experienced the greatest increase: from 23% in 2014 to 69% in 2015. In Danang, child helmet use increased from 37% to 75%, and in Ho Chi Minh City, the rate increased from 48% to 68%. An integrated campaign with national government leadership can bring about a substantial change in child helmet use. The adaptations applied to the action plan implementation have had a greater effect than the previous communications campaign

CHARACTERIZING ENABLING INNOVATIONS AND ENABLING THINKING

The pursuit of innovation is engrained throughout society whether in business via the introduction of offerings, non-profits in their mission-driven initiatives, universities and agencies in their drive for discoveries and inventions, or governments in their desire to improve the quality of life of their citizens. Yet, despite these pursuits, innovations with long-lasting, significant impact represent an infrequent outcome in most domains. The seemingly random nature of these results stems, in part, from the definitions of innovation and the models based on such definitions. Although there is debate on this topic, a comprehensive and pragmatic perspective developed in this work defines innovation as the introduction of a novel or different idea into practice that has a positive impact on society. To date, models of innovation have focused on, for example, new technological advances, new approaches to connectivity in systems, new conceptual frameworks, or even new dimensions of performance - all effectively building on the first half of the definition of innovation and encouraging its pursuit based on the novelty of ideas. However, as explored herein, achieving profound results by innovating on demand might require a perspective that focuses on the impact of an innovation. In this view, innovation does not only entail doing new things, but consciously driving them towards achieving impact through proactive design behaviors. Explicit consideration of the impact dimension in innovation models has been missing, even though it may arguably be the most important since it represents the outcome of innovation

Technologies of accident: forensic media, crash analysis, and the redefinition of progress

This study suggests that by the mid-twentieth century, transportation accidents were no longer thought to be something that could be eradicated through the eradication of human error. Neither were they something to be simply accepted. Instead, they were something to be expertly monitored and measured, scrutinized and analyzed, explained and contained. To these ends, transportation accidents were subjected to rigorous investigation and controlled experiment, and new means and methods were designed and implemented to technologically write, scientifically read, and institutionally manage them. Technologies of accident advances three basic propositions: (1) the transportation accident was made into an object of scientific and institutional analysis, knowledge, and control in the united states during the 1940s and '50s; (2) the transportation accident, regarded in the nineteenth century as an impediment to technological progress, was reconstituted in the twentieth as a catalyst for technological progress; and (3) accident technologies and forensic media such as the flight-data recorder, the cockpit-voice recorder, and the high-speed motion-picture camera embodied and enabled the twin transformations described in the first two propositions. This study examines the origins and implications of a cultural and institutional project driven by two interrelated imperatives: discover the transportation accident's "truth" (in the name of history or science) and discipline the transportation accident's signification (in the name of education). Particular attention is paid to how accident technologies and forensic media articulated and were articulated by their cultural and discursive contexts, as well as the ways in which they rearticulated earlier technocultural imaginings and practices

NOIRS 2011

"The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), in partnership with the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety (LMRIS) and the National Safety Council (NSC), hosted the fifth National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS) on October 18-20, 2011 at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown, West Virginia. NOIRS is the only national forum focused on the presentation of occupational injury research findings, data, and methods. This symposium served numerous objectives aimed at preventing traumatic occupational injury through research and prevention. They included: presenting current research findings; fostering collaboration among researchers from a broad range of disciplines, perspectives, and topic areas; identifying 'best practices' for the prevention of work-related injuries; exploring the cost-effectiveness of injury prevention strategies and interventions; showcasing innovative and high technology approaches to research and prevention; and continuing to promote the implementation of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA). Questions addressed included: What are the latest traumatic occupational injury research findings? What are emerging problems and research areas in workplace trauma? How is prevention through design being applied to occupational injury research and prevention? What activities are being done to implement research to practice in the area of traumatic occupational injury? What are the best practice intervention and prevention strategies? What are the economic costs of traumatic occupational injuries and are the prevention strategies cost-effective? What are the trends in traumatic occupational injury and fatality incidence? In research tools, techniques, and methods? In prevention? What specific workplace risks are faced by adolescents, older adults, foreign-born workers, non-English-speaking workers, low-literacy workers, and other special populations? How can researchers and practitioners in different sectors and disciplines better collaborate and coordinate their activities to reduce traumatic occupational injuries? What methods are available to assess, quantify, and compare traumatic occupational injury risks? Occupational injury researchers from all disciplines attended and shared their research. We encouraged participation by all interested individuals, including: safety researchers; safety practitioners; health care professionals; administrators; epidemiologists; engineers; manufacturers; communication researchers; regulators; employers; policy makers; insurers; students; advocates; workers; educators and trainers; and others interested in attending. The symposium consistd of contributed oral presentations in concurrent sessions and a poster session." - NIOSHTIC-2Welcome -- Symposium information -- Agenda at a glance -- Meeting facilities-main floor -- Acknowledgements -- Full agenda -- List of opening and closing plenary speakers -- List of pre-registered participants -- Abstracts -- Poster abstracts -- Abstract reviewers"October 2011.""This year's symposium theme, Future directions in occupational injury prevention research. NOIRS would not be possible without the support of our co-sponsors: the National Safety Council and the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety." - p. [1]Available via the World Wide Web as an Acrobat .pdf file (1.64 MB, 190 p.)