On 28 May 1999, ICAO successfully adopted a new Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, otherwise known as the Montreal Convention of 1999, which modernizes and consolidates the "Warsaw System". ICAO viewed the merger of several international instruments of private international air law into one legal instrument as a milestone in the history of international law making. However, the rules presented in the Montreal Convention represent principles not unique to the international airline community as they have been tested in the industry for nearly a decade. This thesis analyzes two such provisions, liability and jurisdiction. Chapter One presents the history of the "Warsaw System" and the individual and collective State and private air carrier actions which have given these two principles "face-lifts" throughout the years in order to update their antiquated and unjust effects. Additionally, Chapter One concludes with the drafting history of the Montreal Convention, specifically focusing on the liability and jurisdiction rules. Chapter Two analyzes the liability provisions and the effects that the new two-tier system with its strict liability up to $135,000 U.S. in the first tier and presumed fault---unlimited liability in the second tier will have on the States, carriers, and insurance premiums. Chapter Three explores the consequence of the inclusion of the fifth jurisdiction in the Montreal Convention, a concept which invoked much criticism, yet is not unique to most legal systems of the world. Chapter Three also examines the effects that the fifth jurisdiction coupled with the unlimited liability regime will have on States and carriers alike.

After international transportation by air became a reality, the need to fashion out an appropriate global regime to govern the new relationships created by this development led to the signing of the Warsaw Convention in 1929. As time went on, the need to adjust this original Convention to contemporary technological and legal realities necessitated the enactment of several other instruments that were not new Conventions in themselves, but were merely welded to the original 1929 Convention. With the absence of consolidation, the undesirable result was total confusion created by the concurrent operation of the multiple regimes of the Warsaw System. The overwhelming need to modernise and consolidate all instruments of the Warsaw system into a single uniform text culminated in the signing of the Montreal Convention on 28 May 1999. / This thesis attempts to x-ray the Montreal Convention in the light of its potentials to alleviate the numerous problems of the Warsaw system, including the prospects of its ratification. In the same vein, the inherent deficiencies and imperfections of this new instrument, which might militate against its ratification, have been overtly highlighted for reference. This treatise also analysed the need for developing and African nations to ratify the new convention notwithstanding that their interests were given minimal considerations. The conclusion is a call to all nations, particularly the US, to ratify this new convention without further procrastination, in order to enable it come into force without further delay, lest it become just another relic in the kitty of the very Warsaw System that it sought to replace.

On 31 November 2003 the 1999 Montreal Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air entered into force. Its purpose was to consolidate and modernize the Warsaw system and to reunify the provisions of several international instruments of private international air law under one legal instrument. The Montreal Convention consolidates the positive elements of the Warsaw Convention, the Hague Protocol, the Guadalajara Convention, the Guatemala City Protocol and Additional Protocol Numbers 3 and 4. It also simplifies and modernizes the requirements of documentation relating to the carriage by air of passengers, baggage and cargo. Most importantly, the Montreal Convention modernizes of the liability regime for death and injury to passengers by adopting the passenger liability regime in the IATA Inter-carrier Agreement. It also modernizes the liability regime for damage to baggage and cargo and the delay. In spite of the foregoing, the Montreal Convention fails to advance the unification of private international air law any further than the Warsaw Convention. / This thesis analyzes the provisions of liability regimes under the Warsaw System and the 1999 Montreal Convention. Chapter one studies the liability regime established under the original Warsaw Convention and the subsequent attempts by states, air carriers and other interested entities to update it. Chapter two analyzes the new regime of unlimited liability established by the 1999 Montreal Convention. Chapter three examines the liability of the air carrier for damage caused by terrorist activities. In an effort to demonstrate the innovative elements of the new Convention and to encourage states to ratify it, chapter four surveys the main benefits that have accrued to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its national air carrier upon ratification of the 1999 Montreal Convention.

Multi-piece wheels or rims used on large vehicles such as trucks, tractors, trailers, buses and off-road machines have often been known for their dangerous properties because of the large number of catastrophic accidents involving them. The main causes for these accidents range from dislocation of the rim components in the assembly, mismatch of the components, manufacturing tolerances, corrosion of components to tires. A finite element analysis of a two-piece rim design similar to one manufactured by some of the prominent rim manufacturers in the USA is undertaken. A linear static deformation analysis is performed with the appropriate loading and boundary conditions. The dislocation of the side ring with respect to the rim base and its original designer intent position is established using simulation results from ANSYS and actual rim failure cases. Reliability of the multi-piece rims is analyzed using the failure data provided by the rim manufacturers in connection with a lawsuit (Civil Action No. 88-C-1374). The data was analyzed using MINITAB. The effect of an OSHA standard (1910.177) on servicing multi-piece rims was studied for change in failure patterns of different rims. The hazard functions were plotted and failure rates were calculated for each type of rim. The failure rates were found to be increasing suggesting that the standard had minimal effect on the accidents and failures. The lack of proper service personnel training and design defects were suggested as the probable reasons for the increasing failure rates.

When accidents occur, citizens often are the real first responders. This has been acknowledged and studied from an international perspective, particularly in relation to large crises and disasters, but remains relatively unstudied from a Swedish perspective. This thesis takes its point of departure from people who have been emergency callers or witnesses to traffic accidents, studying their actions and interactions at the scene of an accident in terms of boundaries, positioning and emergence. The aim of this thesis is to study how people’s actions in a specific situation are affected by their interactions with both real and imagined others and how their actions are affected by the spatial context. The thesis consists of four individual studies that relate differently to the main aim of the thesis. The first study focuses on first responders’ options to act in a place that simultaneously is the workplace of emergency personnel: the incident site. This study shows how first responders’ options to act are governed in large part by their interaction with emergency personnel and their boundary practices at the incident site. In this study, we apply theories of boundary practices from Nippert-Eng and the concept of boundary work from Gieryn to explain how emergency personnel control their place of work through boundary practices and through that process control those first responders who are present at the site. In other words, people’s actions at the incident site are affected by both the social and the spatial context. The second study focuses on a limited selection of first responders: those who have placed emergency calls. Through interviews with callers and transcriptions of their emergency calls, this study explores how the callers frame their decision to stop and place the call through different presentations of self. These presentations are constructed through moral positioning, in which the callers position themselves and their actions in relation to both real and imagined others. Thus, the callers also construct normative accounts of what is considered a “preferable” and “non-preferable” way to act at the scene of an accident. The third study takes its point of departure from theories and previous research on emergence because they have been used by disaster sociologists to explain how citizens are the real first responders to crises and disasters. Through the concepts of emergent behavior and emergent norms, papers in this research field have argued that people in these situations act according to “new and not-yet-institutionalized behavior guidelines”. In this study, I argue that emergence, in other words, citizens as the real first responders, is also present in everyday emergencies. Through the narratives of citizen first responders, I explore how they frame their actions through different normative narratives. These normative narratives are not necessarily emergent, however. Rather, the interviewees use past experience and presentations of self to justify their actions at the scene of an accident. The fourth study is an ethnographic reflection of the researcher’s place-bounded identity in a field study that revolves around several different places. Rather than focusing on a story of first responders, this study focuses on the researcher’s, i.e., my own, story from the scene of an accident, the fire truck and the fire station. What I have been able to study through these different studies are stories of actions rather than “actual” actions or behaviors. In these stories, it becomes clear that first responders relate to both a social and spatial context as they provide accounts of their actions at the scene of an accident. They relate to a social context because they frame their actions through their interactions with different actors and position themselves in relation to those actors—and in relation to a spatial context. That is, they perform their actions in a place that is someone else’s place of work, with jurisdictional claims of both legitimacy and control. In summary, this thesis contributes a deeper knowledge of how citizen first responders interpret, understand and tell the story of their actions at the scene of an accident. The contribution considers the fact that citizen first responders are something of a “blind spot”, not only in the field of emergency research but also for emergency personnel who do not always acknowledge the experience of first responders at the scene of accidents.

The aim of this study was to explore how psychosocial lived experiences of taxi drivers explain accident involvement in Uganda. Face to face in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with six male taxi drivers who survived accidents while driving and still served as taxi drivers. The sample was identified with purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Ethical considerations were observed during data collection through transcription, analysis to the final compilation. Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was employed to each participant’s discernment of the specific and general accounts of accident narratives in a bid to make "sense" of their lived worlds as drivers and accident involvement. Three superordinate themes illuminating accidents emerged out of the data: typical routines of taxi drivers; the socio-cultural context; and the taxi drivers’ community. These were discussed based on relevant theories and previous studies as well as pertinent concepts. Considering the study results, typical routines of taxi drivers, driver community factors and social/cultural factors affect each other, these together leave driver-accident involvement inevitable. Categorically such factors include; age, formal education, driving training, driver health status, domestic concerns, significant others, competitive driving / worse-worse, other road users, Impulsive pick and drop-off of passengers, theft, driver stress, state of the road, state of the vehicle among others. Thus behavioural and cognitive remedies are herein suggested towards ameliorative and/or transformative processes of the accident endemic.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Local government, as government at grassroot, has, probably undergone transformation more than any institution in post-1994 South Africa. State-of the- art legislation have been passed that have restructured municipalities, and, especially, in the areas of performance and conduct of councillors and officials. Prominent in the areas of transformation are the roles of the Executive Mayor, which are no longer ceremonial as well as the radical changes which have been legislated in municipal financial management. This study was undertaken to determine the challenges that confront the Executive Mayor in financial management in selected local municipalities in the Free State. The hypothesis was formulated that “despite the state-of-the art legislation to regulate municipal finance, Executive Mayors in municipalities face the challenge of poor service delivery as a result of noncompliance to financial statutes due to human resource incapacity”. To test the hypothesis, use was made by empirical research that comprised questionnaires completed by sample of managers and officials in the selected local municipalities of Mafube, Metsimaholo, Moqhaka and Ngwathe.The findings, amongst others, were that: • Human capital in the 4 selected local municipalities are in their prime age. 69 present of managers are in the aged between 30 years to 50 years; • 57 present of the managers responded that they have adequate qualifications and training to pursue the challenges in municipal finance; • All 4 municipalities normally get their budgets approved as required by compliance. • The hypothesis was consequently, invalidated. The study ends with recommendations to help improve standards and quality of financial management practice in the 4 municipalities. / MA (Industrial Psychology), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

A few years ago bicycles, buses and trains were the main mode of transport for the movement of indigent persons and goods in the study area of Mafikeng. From the late seventies, with the advent of taxis everywhere, these established modes of transport diminished to an extent that, in this recent study, well over 90 percent of the 200 interviewed commuters, were shown to be affirmed regular minibus-taxi passengers. It has been proved by this research and others that the taxi industry, provides passengers with a relatively comfortable and acceptable transport system. However, an increase in vehicle ownership and the flourishing taxi business, have complicated and compromised road traffic with resultant complex and serious problems of traffic safety to road congestion and related violation of the road rules by reckless taxi drivers. Unparalled deaths and expenses resulted from delays, accidents and incidental violence, a situation which is detrimental to the sustainable development of the capital's economy, road users and destroyed properties. If the Mafikeng society is to continue in stability, certain essential tasks need to be put into operation. If the city fails, society may disintegrate or change its form drastically. A certain degree of order and stability are essential for the survival of the social system. The study therefore, recommended, inter alia, that a prerequisite be set rigorously, to guide and educate members into the acceptable ways of society. so as to empower and ease the burden of the police and legal systems in keeping a firm check on any deviation from traffic safety and that, the aim and objectives of taxi associations. primarily be on the improvement of services provided by its members to the public. / (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2005

This thesis examines the methods used by high reliability industries to collect incident data regarding the human factors causes and uses this information to develop a tool for the investigation of accidents and incidents. The focus is the UK offshore oil gas industry, where attention to human behaviour in incident analysis has increased in importance with the reliability of technology. It is proposed that such analysis is also applicable to other high reliability organisations. Reviews of accident causation research, incident reporting and investigation systems, as well as safety climate studies, have provided the basis for three empirical studies. Two reporting forms and one investigation tool have been designed and tested in the offshore oil and gas industry. The first reporting form contains 11 open questions to be completed by the witnesses to incidents. The second reporting form contains 166 questions, which provide more cues for the users to describe the possible causes of the incident. The human factors investigation tool (HFIT) is a more complex method of collecting incident data and contains a total of 391 questions to aid investigators determine the contributing factors to the incident. This thesis provides some evidence that the two reporting forms and the investigation tool have improved the investigation of the human factors causes of incidents over and above the oil companies existing systems. This was accomplished by applying psychological theories and methods successfully used in other industries to develop the reporting and investigation system which focus mainly on the human and organisational causes of accidents. HFIT combines aspects from a number of investigation tools currently used in other industries, such as processes for investigation and causal codes. In addition, the question set of categories, elements, sub-elements and item codes has been developed as a computer programme which is a unique system for incident investigation. The system includes an original set of team working and safety culture questions based on current research in these areas.