Search results for "Transportation Infrastructure"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
Compliance, practices, and attitudes towards VTIs (Vehicle Technical Inspections) in Spain: What prevents Spanish drivers from checking up their cars?
2021
Objective Mechanical conditions of vehicles may play a determinant role in driving safety, the reason why vehicle periodical technical inspections (VTIs) are mandatory in many countries. However, the high number of drivers sanctioned for not complying with this regulation is surprisingly high, and there is not much evidence on what kind(s) of motives may explain this concerning panorama. This study aimed to identify the aspects that modulate the relationship between complying (or not) with VTI’s standards in a nationwide sample of Spanish drivers. The study design also addressed the drivers’ awareness regarding different risky behaviors while driving, depending on their sex and their crash…
Standardized on-road tests assessing fitness-to-drive in people with cognitive impairments: A systematic review.
2020
Objective The on-road assessment is the gold standard because of its ecological validity. Yet existing instruments are heterogeneous and little is known about their psychometric properties. This study identified existing on-road assessment instruments and extracted data on psychometric properties and usability in clinical settings. Method A systematic review identified studies evaluating standardized on-road evaluation instruments adapted for people with cognitive impairment. Published articles were searched on PubMed, CINHAL, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect. Study quality and the level of evidence were assessed using the COSMIN checklist. The collected data were synthetized usi…
Examining the effect of adverse weather on road transportation using weather and traffic sensors.
2018
Adverse weather related to reduced visibility caused by fog and rain can seriously affect the mobility and safety of drivers. It is meaningful to develop effective intelligent transportation system (ITS) strategies to mitigate the negative effects of these different types of adverse weather related to reduced visibility by investigating the effect of rain and fog on traffic parameters. A number of previous researches focused on analyzing the effect of adverse weather related to reduced visibility by using simulated traffic and weather data. There are few researchers that addressed the impact of adverse weather instances using real-time data. Moreover, this paper conducts comprehensive inves…
Criminal networks analysis in missing data scenarios through graph distances.
2021
Data collected in criminal investigations may suffer from: (i) incompleteness, due to the covert nature of criminal organisations; (ii) incorrectness, caused by either unintentional data collection errors and intentional deception by criminals; (iii) inconsistency, when the same information is collected into law enforcement databases multiple times, or in different formats. In this paper we analyse nine real criminal networks of different nature (i.e., Mafia networks, criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations) in order to quantify the impact of incomplete data and to determine which network type is most affected by it. The networks are firstly pruned following two specific methods: …
Evaluating the citywide Edinburgh 20mph speed limit intervention effects on traffic speed and volume: A pre-post observational evaluation.
2021
Objectives Traffic speed is important to public health as it is a major contributory factor to collision risk and casualty severity. 20mph (32km/h) speed limit interventions are an increasingly common approach to address this transport and health challenge, but a more developed evidence base is needed to understand their effects. This study describes the changes in traffic speed and traffic volume in the City of Edinburgh, pre- and 12 months post-implementation of phased city-wide 20mph speed limits from 2016–2018. Methods The City of Edinburgh Council collected speed and volume data across one full week (24 hours a day) pre- and post-20mph speed limits for 66 streets. The pre- and post-sp…
SUP&R DST: SUstainable pavement & railways decision support tool
2018
6th International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering, IALCCE 2018; Ghent; Belgium; 28 October 2018 through 31 October 2018, GHENT, BELGIQUE, 28-/10/2018 - 31/10/2018; In order to help the decisions makers to efficiently address eco-design for transport infrastructure technologies, a decision support toll (DST) was developed in the scope of the training-through-research programme Sustainable Pavements & Railways Initial Training Network (www.superitn.eu). It consists of a computational platform that implements a conceptual framework developed to quantify sustainability. It comes with a set of sustainability indicators tailored to both road and railway systems as well as several ob…
Well-being, behavioral patterns and cycling crashes of different age groups in Latin America: Are aging adults the safest cyclists?
2019
ObjectivesThis study aimed at analyzing the cycling safety-related factors and the mental health indicators of elderly cyclists in comparison with other age groups.MethodsFor this cross-sectional study, we analyzed the data of 911 bicyclists from two Latin American countries that have been experiencing a substantial growth of urban cycling during the last few years: Colombia and Argentina. Participants responded to an e-questionnaire on bicycling behaviors, mental health and cycling safety.ResultsAging adults reported lower rates of risky behaviors and traffic crashes (around .38 in five years), and, on the other hand, more cycling protective behaviors, a higher risk perception and a better…
Job stress and emotional exhaustion at work in Spanish workers: Does unhealthy work affect the decision to drive?
2020
Objectives The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships among the following elements: unhealthy work indicators (job stress and emotional exhaustion at work), the decision to drive (or not), and driving crashes suffered by Spanish workers. Methods For this cross-sectional study, a full sample of 1,200 Spanish drivers (44% women and 56% men) was used, their mean age being 42.8 years. They answered a questionnaire divided into three sections: demographic and driving-related data; burnout, job stress, and life stress; and self-reported road behaviors and driving safety indicators. Results Overall, 41.6% of drivers reported emotional exhaustion at work. Furthermore, 80.2% of the pa…
Influence of sexual appeal in roadside advertising on drivers' attention and driving behavior.
2019
Sexual appeals are widely used in advertising to attract consumers' attention. It has already been proved that they influence the addressee's cognitive processing, which in turn raises the question if sexual appeals may pose a serious threat for road safety when used in roadside advertising. Three studies were designed to answer this question. Study I was a nationwide survey (N = 1095) which revealed that drivers subjectively perceive sexual contents in roadside advertising as distracting and dangerous. Study II was a modified version of the Attentional Network Test (N = 1063) which proved that in cognitive tasks reaction time increases in line with the sexual content of advertisements. Stu…
Can't simply roll it out: Evaluating a real-world virtual reality intervention to reduce driving under the influence.
2020
Driving under the influence (DUI) increases the risk of crashes. Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), represent potentially powerful and attractive tools for the prevention of risky behaviours, such as DUI. Therefore, they are embraced in prevention efforts with VR interventions primed to grow in popularity in near future. However, little is known about the actual effectiveness of such DUI-targeting VR interventions. To help fill the knowledge gap, this study explored the effects of one VR intervention as delivered in the real world. Using pre and post test design, including an intervention group (n = 98) and a control group (n = 39), the intervention evaluation examined you…