This is a case study of a rural school in the Moloto area. The objective of the enquiry is to explore the responses of children to road safety input that they receive at school. Children’s experiences as road users were gathered through intensive interviews with them, their parents and teachers and corroborated by my observation of children using the Moloto road and other arterial roads in the village. The study was informed by the interpretivist paradigm. Road safety education is part of the mainstream curriculum in South African schools but the environment for delivering it effectively is counterproductive in a school that lacks resource materials and trained teachers. The little that is taking place, as the study shows, is class-based, lacks context and focuses on teaching pedestrian skills with no practical input. The community’s unsafe road use behaviour of walking in the middle of the road and crossing the road everywhere undermines whatever road safety skills children might have learnt at home or at school. Key findings of the study are: children’s development of pedestrian skills; children’s constructions of road safety knowledge and their value of life and road signs; the negative influence of the unsafe “road environment”; and children’s attitude to road safety. Although children theoretically know what to do when using the road, in practice they do not show safe road use behaviour. Their construction of road safety knowledge is mainly informed by the practices of the broad community. This paradox between what the literature prescribes, what the national curriculum entails and what the children apply in their everyday use of the roads is the main finding of the study. Although children are enthusiastic about road safety education the same cannot be said about the teachers who are demoralised and not sure whether what they are doing is right or wrong. However, the children understand the value of life and the danger of using the road infrastructure recklessly even though their road use behaviour suggests otherwise. The low level of formal education among parents and the lack of support for teachers from road safety officers do not help the situation. Effective road safety education delivery depends on a number of variables or factors. Where these conditions are not available, the whole process becomes a futile exercise. In conclusion, road safety education can be summarised as a process with sequenced goals: The provision of information about injury risks and how to avoid them, changing attitudes towards risk and safety, and altering behaviour. Training should include the development of clearly defined pedestrian skills through guidance by a more skilled individual and practice in the road environment. Education can thus underpin both legislative and environmental measures by creating a climate of opinion that enhances a culture of safety which is not evident in the Moloto community. It will take political will and resource allocation for road safety education for any meaningful impact to be made in delivering road safety education and pedestrian skills effectively in a rural school like the Moloto primary school in Mpumalanga. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Early Childhood Education / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: Rudolph Hon / Road de-icing salts (predominantly NaCl, CaCl2, and MgCl2) are applied each winter in the northern US, northern Europe, and Canada to maintain safe driving conditions. It is widely recognized that road salt enters the environment through runoff and infiltration (Williams et al., 2000; Ostendorf, et al., 2001; J. Marsalek, 2003), resulting in salinization of freshwater (Godwin et al., 2003; Kaushal et al., 2005; Kelly et al., 2012). The chloride concentration (a proxy for deicers) has doubled in the last 20 years in the groundwater Norwell, MA, the primary public water supply for the town’s residents, and often exceeds the EPA secondary drinking water standard for chloride. The annual budget TDLCl¬ of Third Herring Brook in Norwell, MA is estimated using specific conductance and discharge datasets to determine the retention of dissolved deicers in the watershed during the study period. The estimated retention rate is between 59% and 78%. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences.

There are many types of road signs, each of which carries a different meaning and function: some signs regulate traffic, others indicate the state of the road or guide and warn drivers and pedestrians. Existent image-based road sign recognition systems work well under ideal conditions, but experience problems when the lighting conditions are poor or the signs are partially occluded. The aim of this research is to propose techniques to recognize road signs in a real outdoor environment, especially to deal with poor lighting and partially occluded road signs. To achieve this, hybrid segmentation and classification algorithms are proposed. In the first part of the thesis, we propose a hybrid dynamic threshold colour segmentation algorithm based on histogram analysis. A dynamic threshold is very important in road sign segmentation, since road sign colours may change throughout the day due to environmental conditions. In the second part, we propose a geometrical shape symmetry detection and reconstruction algorithm to detect and reconstruct the shape of the sign when it is partially occluded. This algorithm is robust to scale changes and rotations. The last part of this thesis deals with feature extraction and classification. We propose a hybrid feature vector based on histograms of oriented gradients, local binary patterns, and the scale-invariant feature transform. This vector is fed into a classifier that combines a Support Vector Machine (SVM) using a Random Forest and a hybrid SVM k-Nearest Neighbours (kNN) classifier. The overall method proposed in this thesis shows a high accuracy rate of 99.4% in ideal conditions, 98.6% in noisy and fading conditions, 98.4% in poor lighting conditions, and 92.5% for partially occluded road signs on the GRAMUAH traffic signs dataset.

Thesis (MPA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / Road infrastructure is usually regarded as an economic backbone of the society. Local government has a responsibility to ensure that local roads are maintained in order to facilitate a movement of people, goods and services. The study was undertaken on the premise that local roads in Makhado Local Municipality are not promoting safety. That is, road infrastructure in this municipality is considered to be deteriorating. It is against this background that the researcher found it worthwhile to investigate critical challenges of maintaining road infrastructure in the Makhado Local Municipality focusing on the following towns, Makhado, Vuwani, Waterval and Dzanani only excluding unpaved communities and other small townships, namely Tshikota and Vleifontein. The objectives of the research were to determine the condition and effects of municipal road infrastructure within Makhado Local Municipality; to examine the legal framework governing the local municipality in the context of road infrastructure provision and maintenance as well as to recommend strategies to address challenges of road infrastructure within the municipality. The research employed both qualitative and qualitative in nature. A purposive research sampling approach was used to determine the inclusion of relevant respondents to the study. The research found out that the status of road infrastructure affect various people of different biographical background within the four towns of Makhado Local Municipality in a similar way. In the findings, the study highlight the fact that deteriorating roads conditions are often due to the following: a lack of professionals such as engineers to perform the necessary environmental scanning and identify problems in order to design the roads that suit the area, soil, landscape and climate and that other factors affecting the road infrastructure include corruption in procurement of road infrastructure projects; a lack of accountability of municipal officials; a lack or poor community involvement; and poor monitoring and maintenance of road projects. The study recommends that individuals with knowledge, expertise and skills be employed and further provide proper monitoring of the road projects.

Winter road maintenance activities are crucial for maintaining the accessibility and traffic safety of the road network at northerly latitudes during winter. Common winter road maintenance activities include snow ploughing and the use of anti-icing agents (e.g. road salt, NaCl). Since the local weather is decisive in creating an increased risk of slippery conditions, understanding the link between local weather and conditions at the road surface is critically important. Sensors are commonly installed along roads to measure road weather conditions and support road maintenance personnel in taking appropriate actions. In order to improve winter road maintenance, more precise information about road surface conditions is essential. In this thesis, different methods for estimation of road weather are developed, discussed and tested. The methods use the principles of infrared thermometry, image analysis and spectroscopy to describe ice formation, snow accumulation and road surface wetness in specific patches or along road sections. In practical applications, the methods could be used for better planning of snow clearing operations, forecasting of ice formation and spreading of road salt. Implementing the proposed methods could lead to lower maintenance costs, increased traffic safety and reduced environmental impact. / <p>QC 20121116</p>

Thesis (M.Eng. (Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (p.69-70).

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (p.50-51).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993.

Thesis (M. Eng.)(Mechanical)--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Summaries in Afrikaans and English. Title as viewed on 9 December 2005. Includes bibliographical references.