Objective: In 2010, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death among 13 – 19 year-old males and females in the United States (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2014). The overall goal of this research is to differentiate between measures associated with crashes for young teen drivers, age fourteen to fifteen years on urban and rural roads. Methods: A retrospective study of motor vehicle crashes among 14 and 15-year old drivers in the state of Iowa was conducted using crash information obtained from the Iowa Department of Transportation for the years of 2001 to 2013. Crash rates were calculated by rurality using Urban Influence Codes (UIC). The total number of crashes and crashes resulting in injury were divided by the population of young teen drivers aggregated at the UIC level. Crash and driver characteristics were analyzed for measures of association to the main outcome, injury using logistic regression. Crash and driver characteristics that were associated with injury at the p ≤ 0.20 level were eligible for model inclusion. Results: For every 1,000 young teen drivers age fourteen to fifteen years, nearly 8 were involved in a crash statewide from 2001 - 2013. Half of all crashes in the dataset occurred in an urban area (n = 4327, 51%), while 7% occurred in a suburban area, 29% in a town and 13% in a remote rural area. Results show, for all crashes and crashes resulting in injury, that as the level of rurality increases, rates of crash also increase. Remote rural crashes have the highest crash rate ratio (RR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.08, 1.22), relative to urban crashes. The presence of multiple teen passengers in the vehicle increased the odds of having a crash that resulted in injury 10.73 times, compared to no passengers being present (95% CI: 7.10, 16.22). Characteristics with the strongest association with injury were single vehicle collisions, crashes that occurred on rural roads, crashes were the driver lost control and crashes were multiple teen passengers were present. Conclusions: Results from this study highlight the dangerous circumstances that young teen drivers face, especially when driving on rural roads. In order to protect young teen drivers from crashes, there is a need for more restrictions on the number of passengers and the development of prevention methods to make young teen drivers safer.

No description available.

Background: The rise in the total number of seniors will lead to a considerable increase in the prevalence of persons with dementia (PWD), the number of senior drivers and the amount of drivers with dementia. Understanding how this life event is experienced by PWD and their caregivers is paramount to policy development and planning. Methods: Descriptive qualitative study using secondary data. There were 25 participants over the age of 65, whose monthly phone call conversations were analyzed using analytic induction, to find links and create a theoretically based hypothesis regarding the experience of driving cessation. A standardized questionnaire was used to guide the telephone data collection. Results: PWD may experience emotions of anger when they don’t understand why they are no longer allowed to drive. When PWD understand why they are no longer allowed to drive, they seem to accept and self-regulate their driving cessation. Cognitive tests and physicians instructing PWD they have to cease driving, are not perceived to be helpful in this understanding. Public transportation and alternate means of personal transportation are potentially associated with the acceptance of driving cessation. Conclusions: PWD might not understand the link between cognitive assessments, their memory, and their driving performance. A systems level approach to improved access to transportation and on-road driving tests might make it easier for PWD to understand and accept the lifestyle changes that come with driving cessation.

In 2010, there were 6,714,288 total registered drivers in New Jersey. Approximately 4% (267,485) of these drivers had a suspended driver's license. The intent of suspending a driver's license is to keep hazardous drivers off of the roads, in hopes of having a safer driving environment for others on the road. Drivers in New Jersey can have their driver's license suspended for a number of reasons. These include dangerous driving behaviors such as reckless driving and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. However, there are also reasons for suspension that have little or nothing to do with driver behavior, such as failure to pay child support, failure to pay MVC insurance surcharge, or failure to appear in court. While these offenses are all due of consequence, they have little or nothing to do with driver behavior. This research program will conduct an analysis of the issues and implications of implementing a restricted-use license program for suspended New Jersey drivers, detailing key issues associated with restricted-use license programs. It was found that over two-thirds of suspended drivers in New Jersey receive driver's license suspensions for both driving and non-driving-related offenses, whereas only about four-percent of suspended drivers in New Jersey receive a driver's license suspension for driving-related reasons only. It was also found that drivers suspended for non-driving related reasons have different driver behavior than drivers suspended for driving related reasons. Surveying both New Jersey police chiefs, as well as U.S. state motor vehicle agencies, it was found that there is a generally positive perception of restricted driver's license programs. Overall, it is recommended that the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission implement a restricted driver's license program in New Jersey. / Master of Science

The United States of America is facing an important decision. Should illegal immigrants be allowed to obtain driver’s licenses? Thus far ten states and the District of Columbia as well as Puerto Rico have passed laws permitting this to come into fruition. The purpose of this thesis is to gain an understanding of the significance that licensing laws have on this country. This thesis will compare the views and beliefs of both the proponents and opponents to this law. This thesis also discusses how Florida is deeply affected due to its large Hispanic immigrant population. This issue is laden with passion and emotion due to the desire of many to see this group of people that are currently undocumented, have the ability to lead a more normal life and conversely the fear that allowing licenses will give undocumented aliens privileges of citizens and encourage illegal immigration. The views on these laws are divided throughout the nation. The lawfulness is examined in reference to rewarding and promoting illegal immigration and the cumulative negative effects that this can have on this country. The driver’s license requirements were analyzed for each individual state. News articles were researched and used to enrich the pros and cons on this topic. This research was then used to give a recommendation for Florida law

No description available.

In recent years, multi-agent traffic simulation has been widely used to accurately evaluate the performance of a road network considering individual and dynamic movements of vehicles under a virtual roadway environment. Given initial traffic demands and road conditions, the simulation is executed with multiple iterations and provides users with converged roadway conditions for the performance evaluation. For an accurate traffic simulation model, the driver's learning behavior is one of the major components to be concerned, as it affects road conditions (e.g., traffic flows) at each iteration as well as performance (e.g., accuracy and computational efficiency) of the traffic simulation. The goal of this study is to propose a realistic learning behavior model of drivers concerning their uncertain perception and interactions with other drivers. The proposed learning model is based on the Extended Belief-Desire-Intention (E-BDI) framework and two major decisions arising in the field of transportation (i.e., route planning and decision-making at an intersection). More specifically, the learning behavior is modeled via a dynamic evolution of a Bayesian network (BN) structure. The proposed dynamic learning approach considers three underlying assumptions: 1) the limited memory of a driver, 2) learning with incomplete observations on the road conditions, and 3) non-stationary road conditions. Thus, the dynamic learning approach allows driver agents to understand real-time road conditions and estimate future road conditions based on their past knowledge. In addition, interaction behaviors are also incorporated in the E-BDI framework to address influences of interactions on the driver's learning behavior. In this dissertation work, five major human interactions adopted from a social science literature are considered: 1) accommodation, 2) collaboration, 3) compromise, 4) avoidance, and 5) competition. The first three interaction types help to mimic information exchange behaviors between drivers (e.g., finding a route using a navigation system) while the last two interaction types are relevant with behaviors involving non-information exchange behaviors (e.g., finding a route based on a driver's own experiences). To calibrate the proposed learning behavior model and evaluate its performance in terms of inference accuracy and computational efficiency, drivers' decision data at intersections are collected via a human-in-the-loop experiment involving a driving simulator. Moreover, the proposed model is used to test and demonstrate the impact of five interactions on drivers' learning behavior under an en route planning scenario with real traffic data of Albany, New York, and Phoenix, Arizona. In this dissertation work, two major traffic simulation platforms, AnyLogic® and DynusT®, are used for the demonstration purposes. The experimental results reveal that the proposed model is effective in modeling realistic learning behaviors of drivers in conduction with interactions with other drivers.

In this paper is tested method for detection skin on the driver's head. It is based on skin color and motion detection. We also tested method for eye detection in image.

Background: The Swedish driving licence test is a criterion-referenced test resulting in a pass or fail. It currently consists of two parts - a theory test with 65 multiple-choice items and a practical driving test where at least 25 minutes are spent driving in traffic. It is a high-stakes test in the sense that the results are used to determine whether the test-taker should be allowed to drive a car without supervision. As the only other requirements for obtaining a licence is a few hours of hazard education (and a short introduction if you intend to drive with a lay instructor) it is important that the test result, in terms of pass or fail, is reliable and valid. If this is not the case it could have detrimental effects on traffic safety. Examining all relevant aspects is beyond the scope of this licentiate thesis so I have focused on reliability. Methods Reliability for both the theoretical and practical test results was examined. As these are very different types of tests the types of reliability examined also differed. In order to examine inter-rater reliability of the driving test 83 examiners were accompanied by one of five selected supervising examiners for a day of tests. All in all 535 tests were conducted with two examiners assessing the same performance. At the end of the day the examiners compared notes and tried to determine the reason for any inconsistencies. Both examiners and students also filled in questionnaires with questions about background and preparation. As for studying decision consistency and decision accuracy of the theory test, three test versions (a total of around 12,000 tests) were examined with the help of methods devised by Subkoviak (Subkoviak, 1976, 1988) and Hanson & Brennan (Brennan, 2004; Hanson & Brennan, 1990). Results The results from two research studies concerning reliability were presented. Study I focused on inter-rater reliability in the driving test and in 93 per cent of cases the examiners made the same assessment. For the tests where their opinions differed there was no correlation to any of the background variables or other variables examined except for three, which had logical explanations and did not constitute a problem. Although there were cases where the differences were due to different stances on matters of interpretation the most common suggested cause was the placement in the car (back seat vs. front seat). Although the supervising examiners gave both praise and criticism as to how the test was carried out the study does not answer the question whether the tests were equal in terms of composition and difficulty. In Study II the focus was on decision consistency and decision accuracy in the theory test. Three versions of the theory tests were examined and, on the whole, found to be fairly similar in terms of item difficulty and score distribution, but the mean was so close to the cut-score (i.e. the score required to pass) that the pass rate differed somewhat between versions. Agreement coefficients were around .80 for all test versions (between .79 and .82 depending on method). Classification accuracy indicated an .87 probability of a correct classification. Conclusion It is important to examine the reliability and validity of the driving licence test since a misclassification can have serious consequences in terms of traffic safety. In the studies included here the rate of agreement between examiners is deemed as satisfactory. It would be preferable if the classification consistency and classification accuracy, as estimated by the methods used, were higher for the theory test, given its importance. While reliability in terms of agreement between raters/examiners or consistency and accuracy of classification are routinely examined in other contexts, such as large-scale educational testing, this is not often done for the driving licence tests. At the same time, the methods used here can be transferred to contexts where such properties are generally not examined. Collecting information about test-takers and examiners, like in Study I, can provide evidence concerning possible bias. Examining to what extent decisions are consistent is one important aspect of collecting evidence that shows that test results can be used to draw conclusions about driver competence. Still, regardless of outcome, validation is a process that never ends. There is always reason to examine various aspects and make further improvements. There are also many other relevant aspects to examine. A prerequisite for the validity of the score interpretation of a criterion-referenced test like this one is that the cut-score is appropriate and the content relevant. This should therefore be the subject of further research as the validation process continues.

This work deals with the analysis of traffic car-accidents in the Czech Republic, Sweden and Denmark. Excepting the analysis, it contains basic information and evaluation. Then in the final part is also given a proposal of measures to reduce car-accidents in the Czech Republic.