BACKGROUND Farm vehicle-related crashes (crashes) are hazardous for farm and non-farm vehicle users; however, most studies examine risk factors of injury given a crash, and shed little light on risk factors of crashes. We evaluated the association of road sinuosity and gradient with crashes in nine Midwestern States from 2005 to 2010. METHODS We collected crash data from the state departments...

Map matching is not always perfect and sometimes produces mismatches. Thus, there is a degree of uncertainty for how well a map-matching algorithm will perform under certain circumstances. Circumstantial factors include accuracies of sensor data and surrounding road network structure, among others. This paper attempts to shed light on this uncertainty and proposes a methodology for predicting p...

The pollutant loads of surface runoff in an urban tourist area have been investigated for two years in the Wuhan City Zoo, China. Eight sampling sites, including two woodlands, three animal yards, two roofs and one road, were selected for sampling and study. The results indicate that pollutants ranked in a predictable order of decreasing load (e.g. animal yard > roof > woodland > road), with an...

In this paper, we propose a fast and robust unstructured road detection method that integrates GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and CPU implementations. In order to ensure the robustness of the algorithm, BP (Back Propagation) Neural Network is employed to learn the color features from a set of sample of both road region and off-road region, and then to classify a newly pixel. And the B-spline cu...

In this study, the effects of information on driver’s judgment of curve sharpness were investigated by field experiment. Sixteen curves of real road were picked up. 80 subjects performed the driving test in the daytime and at nighttime. Four kinds of variables were proposed to judge curve depth: “No Information”, “Paper Map”, “Car Navigation System” and “Proposed Warning Sign”. Each subject per...

We determined the concurrent criterion validity of the Safe Driving Behavior Measure (SDBM) for on-road outcomes (passing or failing the on-road test as determined by a certified driving rehabilitation specialist) among older drivers and their family members-caregivers. On the basis of ratings from 168 older drivers and 168 family members-caregivers, we calculated receiver operating characteris...

We develop and test a ‘‘slip-based’’ method to estimate the maximum available tire-road friction during braking. The method is based on the hypothesis that the low-slip, low-m parts of the slip curve used during normal driving can indicate the maximum tire-road friction coefficient, mmax . We find support for this hypothesis in the literature and through experiments. The friction estimation alg...

Arc splines are G continuous curves made of circular arcs and straight-line segments. They have the advantages that the curvature of an arc spline is known and controlled at all but a finite number of points, and that the offset curve of an arc spline is another arc spline. Arc splines are used by computer-controlled machines as a natural curve along which to cut and are used by highway route p...

Through extensive literature search, it has been found that there exists strong correlation between the Mental Workload of an automobile driver with his or her physiological measurements, especially the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurements. In order to make a driver's HRV monitoring on the road possible, a new photoplethysmograph (PPG) Ring Sensor prototype has been devised specifically fo...