BACKGROUND The use of a cell phone or communication device while driving is illegal in many jurisdictions, yet evidence evaluating the crash risk associated with cell phone use in naturalistic settings is limited. This article aims to determine whether cell phone use while driving increases motor vehicle crash culpability. Method Drivers involved in crashes where police reported cell phone use ...

Work zones especially long-term work zones increase traffic conflicts and cause safety problems. Proper casualty risk assessment for a work zone is of importance for both traffic safety engineers and travelers. This paper develops a novel probabilistic quantitative risk assessment (QRA) model to evaluate the casualty risk combining frequency and consequence of all accident scenarios triggered b...

I develop a dynamic equilibrium model that incorporates incorrect beliefs about crash risk and use it to explain the available empirical evidence on financial booms and busts. In the model, if a long period of time goes by without a crash, some investors’ perceived crash risk falls below the true crash risk, inducing them to take on excessive leverage. Following a drop in fundamentals, these in...

As a group, drivers with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have an increased risk for motor vehicle crashes, but determining individual crash risk is difficult. We tested the hypothesis that drivers with OSA have impaired visual attention, as indexed by reduced useful field of view (UFOV), a predictor of high-risk driving. Forty-one drivers with untreated OSA and 50 comparison drivers were assessed...

BACKGROUND Some motor vehicle crashes, particularly single-vehicle crashes, may result from intentional self-harm. We conducted a prospective cohort study to assess the risk that intentional self-harm poses for motor vehicle crashes among young drivers. METHODS We prospectively linked survey data from newly licensed drivers aged 17-24 years to data on licensing attempts and police-reported mo...

OBJECTIVES To assess the incidence of cerebral palsy among children born to mothers who had their pregnancy complicated by a motor vehicle crash. DESIGN Retrospective longitudinal cohort analysis of children born from 1 April 2002 to 31 March 2012 in Ontario, Canada. PARTICIPANTS Cases defined as pregnancies complicated by a motor vehicle crash and controls as remaining pregnancies with no ...

Reactive traffic management strategies such as incident detection are becoming less relevant with the advancement of mobile phone usage. Freeway management in the 21 century needs to shift focus toward proactive strategies that include anticipating incidents such as the crashes. Predicting crash occurrences would also be the key to traffic safety. A two-step approach to identify freeway locatio...

Recent analyses have established that 4WD vehicles are aggressive in crashes, causing comparatively more harm than other passenger vehicles when in collision with other road users, and have a high risk of rollover crashes. To assess the safety of these vehicles more completely, this study produced two analyses of risk: firstly, estimates of crash risk and injury rates using NZ data; and, second...