Benefits for Australia of the introduction of an ADR on pedestrian protection

This report estimates the benefits to Australia of the adoption of an ADR on pedestrian protection. It compares the sales-weighted performance of the Australian and European new car fleets in relevant pedestrian impact tests, based on test reports from EuroNCAP and ANCAP. These testing programs use very similar tests to those prescribed by the European Directive on pedestrian safety and a proposed Global Technical Regulation. This comparison showed that the pedestrian protection of the new car fleet in Australia is inferior to that of the new car fleet in Europe, and the difference is associated with the introduction of the first phase requirements of the Directive. The benefits to Australia of an ADR on pedestrian protection were calculated, based on benefit calculations that were estimated for a second phase of European regulation due in 2011. Proportional reductions of fatal, serious and slight casualties were applied to Australian casualty data and the associated crash costs. By examining the current performance of the new car fleet, these benefits were disaggregated into benefits that have already accrued since overseas and international regulation was mooted, and that which is yet to be realised through compliance of the new car fleet with a future regulation. An Australian Design Rule conforming to the proposed Global Technical Regulation with the addition of Brake Assist would reduce, in Australia, fatalities by 28, serious injuries by 947 and slight injuries by 1247 each year, with associated savings in crash costs of $385 million per year. Despite recent improvements in the performance of the fleet, around half of these benefits are yet to be realised.RWG Anderson, G Ponte, D Searso

A comparison of the pedestrian passive safety performance of the new vehicle fleet in Australia, France and the United Kingdom

Improvements to frontal vehicle design can improve a pedestrian's chance of survival in a collision but there are no design rules pertaining to pedestrian protection in Australia. Some overseas regulators are mandating a minimum level of pedestrian safety, and one consequence of this might be a flow of safer designs into the Australian vehicle fleet. To assess this, the distribution of pedestrian safety performance in the new car fleet of Australia was compared to those of France and the United Kingdom. A greater proportion of new passenger vehicles rated less than 2-stars for pedestrian safety by Euro NCAP and ANCAP are sold in Australia than in France and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the portion of the new car fleet in France and the United Kingdom assessed by Euro NCAP/ANCAP since the beginning of 2006 has shown significant improvement and has a larger proportion of better performing vehicles than the equivalent segment of the Australian new car fleet. This period corresponds with the introduction of vehicle pedestrian safety requirements in Europe.Giulio Ponte, Robert Anderson, Daniel Searso

Headform impact test performance of vehicles under the GTR on pedestrian safety

A Global Technical Regulation (GTR) on pedestrian safety is currently in its final draft stages, and may be adopted in Australia as an Australian Design Rule. Currently, selected new vehicles are tested by the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) for pedestrian protection; the GTR testing procedure is similar, but has different test conditions. The goal of this study was to estimate how many vehicles tested by ANCAP might be expected to pass the headform testing requirements of the GTR based on the vehicles ANCAP performance. Initially, three popular vehicles were tested to the specifications of the GTR. The resulting data was used to validate a theoretical relationship that predicts the change in Head Injury Criterion (HIC) for a given change in headform mass and impact speed. This relationship was used to predict the best-case and worst-case results for 60 vehicles previously tested by ANCAP, 33 of which are current models. The results indicate that a relatively small number of vehicles would be expected to unequivocally pass the GTR requirements, however many more may pass with little to no modifications.DJ Searson, RWG Anderson, G Ponte and AL van den Ber

Emerging vehicle safety technologies and their potential benefits: discussion of expert opinions

The aim of this study was to consult experts from Australia and overseas about their views on emerging technologies, the likely uptake of these technologies and their potential to reduce the number of crashes or crash severity. Interviews were conducted with a cross-section of vehicle and road safety experts. The topics discussed included the most promising technologies, implementation issues, time frame, limitations, and opinions on future technologies, 20 - 30 years from now. In total, 16 interviews were conducted, with nine Australian-based experts and seven international experts. The experts' responses are discussed in the context of research literature on the technologies. The experts suggested that the most important emerging vehicle safety technologies are primary safety systems that provide increasing levels of automation. Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) was consistently identified as having the most potential in the near future, and this was confirmed in the literature. Early introduction of vehicle safety systems that are effective at preventing injury crashes will result in significant and cumulative financial and societal savings. This paper provides a brief overview of the more promising vehicle safety technologies, a summary of the opinions of the experts interviewed and potential mechanisms for accelerating uptake of vehicle safety technologies.Daniel Searson, Giulio Ponte, T Paul Hutchinson, Robert Anderson and Mary Lydo

The effect of bull bars on head impact kinematics in pedestrian crashes

This study sought to assess the effect of bull bars on the head kinematics and head impact severity of an adult pedestrian in a collision. Multibody models were created to represent a range of sport-utility vehicles and common bull bar geometries and materials. The contact-impact behaviours of the pedestrian-vehicle interactions were determined from a series of impact tests with the vehicles and the bull bars being modelled. A generalised Hunt-Crossley damping model was fitted to the test data. The interaction models were implemented in MADYMO models of a vehicle pedestrian collision using the geometry of the vehicles and bull bars and a fiftieth percentile male human model. Head kinematics were extracted and the head impact severity estimated. The speed of the head impact with the bonnet was increased by between 7 and 55 percent in simulations where a bull bar was fitted to the vehicle. The increase in head impact velocity was not related to the bull bar material type. The 55 percent increase in head impact speed produced a 249 percent increase in HIC value, using a head-bonnet interaction model based on Australasian NCAP head impact test results. The location of the head impact was affected by the bull bar but the effect was not consistent. The simulation results show that the addition of a bull bar to the front of a vehicle increases the speed of the head impact with the bonnet. This speed increase appears to be less a product of the material the bull bar is made from, but more a product of the geometry of the bull bar. This suggests that bull bar geometries could be altered to improve pedestrian collision kinematics possibly even lessening the severity of the head impact with the bonnet. Combined with a soft material, such as polymer, this may lead to a safer bull bar designs for pedestrians.RWG Anderson, S Doecke, AL van den Berg, DJ Searson, G Pont

Relaxation of Surface Profiles by Evaporation Dynamics

We present simulations of the relaxation towards equilibrium of one dimensional steps and sinusoidal grooves imprinted on a surface below its roughening transition. We use a generalization of the hypercube stacking model of Forrest and Tang, that allows for temperature dependent next-nearest-neighbor interactions. For the step geometry the results at T=0 agree well with the t^(1/4) prediction of continuum theory for the spreading of the step. In the case of periodic profiles we modify the mobility for the tips of the profile and find the approximate solution of the resulting free boundary problem to be in reasonable agreement with the T=0 simulations.Comment: 6 pages, Revtex, 5 Postscript figures, to appear in PRB 15, October 199

A preliminary evaluation of a single session behavioural activation intervention to improve well-being and prevent depression in carers

Background: Major depressive disorder is predicted to be the lead cause of disease burden by 2030. Despite evidence suggesting that major depressive disorder can be prevented, little attention has been paid to developing interventions for this purpose. As research suggests that high levels of subjective well-being may protect against depression, an intervention that can enhance and maintain subjective well-being may assist in preventing major depressive disorder. Behavioural activation (BA) is a promising intervention that has been observed to both effectively treat depression and also enhance subjective well-being, even in a single session. Method: A randomised control design was used to investigate the efficacy of a single session of BA to boost well-being and reduce distress in a community sample of carers (N = 13), who may be at increased risk of major depressive disorder. Outcome measures assessed symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and well-being and the lifestyle factors of perceived environmental reward and the extent to which individuals lived in accordance with their personal values. Results: Generalised linear mixed modelling revealed significant group × time interactions for stress scores and valued living, indicating a treatment effect on these outcomes. Conclusions: Findings provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of a single session BA intervention to improve outcomes of carers

A global ocean atlas of eukaryotic genes

While our knowledge about the roles of microbes and viruses in the ocean has increased tremendously due to recent advances in genomics and metagenomics, research on marine microbial eukaryotes and zooplankton has benefited much less from these new technologies because of their larger genomes, their enormous diversity, and largely unexplored physiologies. Here, we use a metatranscriptomics approach to capture expressed genes in open ocean Tara Oceans stations across four organismal size fractions. The individual sequence reads cluster into 116 million unigenes representing the largest reference collection of eukaryotic transcripts from any single biome. The catalog is used to unveil functions expressed by eukaryotic marine plankton, and to assess their functional biogeography. Almost half of the sequences have no similarity with known proteins, and a great number belong to new gene families with a restricted distribution in the ocean. Overall, the resource provides the foundations for exploring the roles of marine eukaryotes in ocean ecology and biogeochemistry

Plankton networks driving carbon export in the oligotrophic ocean

The biological carbon pump is the process by which CO 2 is transformed to organic carbon via photosynthesis, exported through sinking particles, and finally sequestered in the deep ocean. While the intensity of the pump correlates with plankton community composition, the underlying ecosystem structure driving the process remains largely uncharacterized. Here we use environmental and metagenomic data gathered during the Tara Oceans expedition to improve our understanding of carbon export in the oligotrophic ocean. We show that specific plankton communities, from the surface and deep chlorophyll maximum, correlate with carbon export at 150 m and highlight unexpected taxa such as Radiolaria and alveolate parasites, as well as Synechococcus and their phages, as lineages most strongly associated with carbon export in the subtropical, nutrient-depleted, oligotrophic ocean. Additionally, we show that the relative abundance of a few bacterial and viral genes can predict a significant fraction of the variability in carbon export in these regions

Open science resources for the discovery and analysis of Tara Oceans data

Le " Tara Expéditions" organise des expéditions pour étudier et comprendre l'impact des changements climatiques sur nos océans.International audienceThe Tara Oceans expedition (2009–2013) sampled contrasting ecosystems of the world oceans, collecting environmental data and plankton, from viruses to metazoans, for later analysis using modern sequencing and state-of-the-art imaging technologies. It surveyed 210 ecosystems in 20 biogeographic provinces, collecting over 35,000 samples of seawater and plankton. The interpretation of such an extensive collection of samples in their ecological context requires means to explore, assess and access raw and validated data sets. To address this challenge, the Tara Oceans Consortium offers open science resources, including the use of open access archives for nucleotides (ENA) and for environmental, biogeochemical, taxonomic and morphological data (PANGAEA), and the development of on line discovery tools and collaborative annotation tools for sequences and images. Here, we present an overview of Tara Oceans Data, and we provide detailed registries (data sets) of all campaigns (from port-to-port), stations and sampling events