One hundred ninety-five rear impacts with both front- and rear-seat occupants in the struck car, where at least one occupant sustained permanent disability, were selected for study. There was a significantly higher disability risk for the female rear-seat occupant compared with the male driver. Furthermore, a higher risk was found for female rear-seat occupants compared with female front-seat p...

This study applies NASS/CDS, GES and FARS data to examine occupant exposure plus injury and fatality rates for belted occupants in frontal crashes by seating position, age and gender. The NASS data was used to examine the distributions by crash severity. The GES data showed that when two elderly occupants (age 65+) were present, the female occupied the right front passenger position 73% of the ...

Drivers have been running an “arms race” on American roads by buying inc reasingly large vehicles such as SUVs and light trucks. An important reason for the popularity of large vehicles is that families view them as providing better protection to their occupants if a crash occurs. But when families drive large vehicles, they pose an increased danger to occupants of smaller vehicles and to pedes...

One in every five occupants thrown from a car receives fatal injuries. A motorist who uses a safety belt, in all probability, will not be thrown from the car during a crash. The rate of fatal injury for ejected occupants was found to be 40 times the rate for occupants not thrown from their cars, as determined from national accident sampling data. These data refute the popular notion that "being...

PURPOSE : The purpose of this study is to establish whether motor vehicular crash (MVC) case fatality varies across different urbanization levels in the USA using a representative sample of crashes. METHODS : Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between urbanization level [i.e., central city (CC), suburban (SU) and others (OT)] and mortality were estimated ...

Despite the significant progress observed over the last decades, the European building stock still consumes significant amounts of energy (39% of the total final energy), whilst it does not always provide the conditions required for occupants’ well-being and thermal comfort sensation. In order to achieve the goal of nearly or even zero energy buildings, a deep refurbishment of the building stoc...

We have long known that human occupants are a major source of microbes in the built environment, thus raising the question: How much can we learn about the occupants of a building by analyzing the microbial communities found in indoor air? We investigated bacterial and fungal diversity found in airborne dust collected onto heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) air filters and settli...

This paper describes an innovative multiagent system called SAVES with the goal of conserving energy in commercial buildings. We specifically focus on an application to be deployed in an existing university building that provides several key novelties: (i) jointly performed with the university facility management team, SAVES is based on actual occupant preferences and schedules, actual energy c...

INTRODUCTION Longitudinal barriers, such as guardrails, are designed to prevent a vehicle that leaves the roadway from impacting a more dangerous object while minimizing the risk of injury to the vehicle occupants. Current full-scale test procedures for these devices do not consider the effect of occupant restraints such as seatbelts and airbags. The purpose of this study was to determine the e...