Motorized Vehicle Safety

Rail Crossings: A Strategy to Select Countermeasure Improvements for Rail-Highway Crossings in California

Cooper, Douglas L.
Ragland, David R.
2007

Rail crossing crashes have declined in the past 30 years, both nationally and in California. This is largely attributed to the closing of a large number of crossings as well as the deployment of a wide range of countermeasures, including signal systems, gating and grade separation programs. However, the number of crashes and subsequent injuries and deaths is still unacceptably high. Rail crossings provide different levels of warnings from four-quadrant gates down to stop signs. To understand how the state of California can best utilize state and federal funding available through SAFETEA-LU...

A 3D Computer Simulation Test of the Leibowitz Hypothesis

Barton, Joseph E.
Cohn, Theodore E.
2007

Do large objects appear to approach more slowly than smaller objects traveling at the same speed? If so then this might help explain the inordinately high accident rates involving large vehicles such as buses and trains. To test this, this study constructed an experiment using a 3D visual simulator in which different sized textured spheres approached at different speeds. We found that observers consistently judged the smaller sphere to be the faster, even in cases where the larger sphere was traveling at up to twice the speed of the smaller. Analysis of these results suggests that the...

Child Restraint Use: Workbook and Guide for Evaluating Community-based Programs

Ragland, David R.
Geyer, Judy A.
Cooper, Jill F.
2003

The leading cause of injury and death for children in California is motor vehicle crashes. To prevent these needless tragedies, the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), through the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, funds child passenger safety programs throughout the state. This workbook is designed to be used by these local programs to 1) evaluate the impact of their activities on child restraint use, 2) evaluate results to improve or modify the programs as needed, and 3) meet contractual evaluation requirements. Program evaluations can be difficult for local programs due...

Relative Burden of Distracted Driving Fatalities by Characteristic

Griswold, Julia B.
Grembek, Offer
2014

We were glad to see discussion of the dangers of distracted driving to vulnerable road users in the article by Stimpson et al. in the November/December 2013 issue of Public Health Reports. However, we question the conclusion that pedestrian and bicyclist victims of distracted driving crashes are disproportionately nonHispanic white. This inference appears to be drawn from the results in Table 1 of the article, where the rates are calculated per one million total population, which fails to account for the different sizes of the populations of each race/ethnicity. To correctly evaluate the...

Keeping Children Safe in Cars

Cooper, Jill F.
2004

Low-income children face twice the risk of dying from crash-related injuries compared to children from higher income families. To increase safety for these children, the California Health Care Safety Net Institute and the UC Davis Medical Center launched the Child Passenger Safety (CPS) Initiative with funding from the California Office of Traffic Safety. The initiative ran from April, 2001, through September, 2003, and had these goals: to increase safety seat use among families using public health care services; to decrease the rate of safety seat misuse among these families; and to...

Quantifying the Performance of Countermeasures for Collision Concentration Related to Ramp/Freeway Mainline Junctions

Lee, Joon Ho
Chan, Ching-Yao
Ragland, David R.
2009

This study performed before-and-after analyses (comparisons of collisions before and after the construction of auxiliary lanes) on collision rate at nine study sites in California in order to achieve two objectives: (i) to estimate the freeway Crash/Collision Reduction Factor (CRF) for auxiliary lanes, and (ii) to develop design guidelines for the construction of auxiliary lanes. Findings indicate that on average, collision rates decreased by 17.3 percent at nine study sites. The study also found that after construction of auxiliary lanes at two study sites, collision rates increased when...

Development of a Variable Speed Limit Strategy Based on Car Following Behaviors for Improving Freeway Safety Under Severe Weathers

Li, Zhibin
Liu, Pan
Li, Ye
Xu, Chengcheng
Yu, Hao
Zhang, Yuanyuan
2014

Severe weather reduces sight distance and increases stopping distance of traveling vehicles. Traffic collisions are likely to occur when vehicles encounter traffic congestions on freeways under severe weathers. The primary objective of this study is to develop a control strategy of variable speed limit (VSL) to improve freeway safety in different types of weather conditions. The control strategy aims to reduce vehicle speeds gradually prior to congestions. A car-following model was used to simulate the behaviors of drivers in different visibility and road adhesion conditions. The...

Trauma Center-Based Surveillance of Nontraffic Pedestrian Injury among California Children

Rice, Thomas M.
Trent, Roger B.
Bernacki, Kate
Rice, Jennifer K.
Lovette, Bonnie
Hoover, Eileen
Fennell, Janette
Aistrich, Anna Zacher
Wiltsek, Dana
Corman, Ellen
Anderson, Craig L.
Sherck, John
2011

Introduction: Every year in the United States, thousands of young children are injured by passenger vehicles in driveways or parking areas. Little is known about risk factors, and incidence rates are difficult to estimate because ascertainment using police collision reports or media sources is incomplete. This study used surveillance at trauma centers to identify incidents and parent interviews to obtain detailed information on incidents, vehicles, and children.

Methods: Eight California trauma centers conducted surveillance of nontraffic pedestrian collision injury to children aged...

The Effectiveness of Child Restraint Systems for Children Aged 3 Years or Younger During Motor Vehicle Collisions: 1996 to 2005

Rice, Thomas M.
Anderson, Craig L.
2009

Objectives. We estimated the effectiveness of child restraints in preventing death during motor vehicle collisions among children 3 years or younger.

Methods. We conducted a matched cohort study using Fatality Analysis Reporting System data from 1996 to 2005. We estimated death risk ratios using conditional Poisson regression, bootstrapping, multiple imputation, and a sensitivity analysis of misclassification bias. We examined possible effect modification by selected factors.

Results. The estimated death risk ratios comparing child safety seats with...

Geocoding vehicle collisions on Korean expressways based on postmile referencing

Park, Shin Hyoung
Bigham, John M.
Kho, Seung-Young
Kang, Seungmo
Kim, Dong-Kyu
2011

Geocoding is the process of assigning latitude and longitude coordinates to data that contain spatial information. Geocoded records of motor vehicle collisions are an invaluable resource for injury prevention researchers. The objective of this study is to apply the postmile referencing system for geocoding collisions on Korean expressways and summarize the methodology and results with comparative research efforts in the USA. A street network provided by Korea Expressway Corporation was cleaned and calibrated using ArcGIS and a customized Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) tool....