Renewable energy integration is accompanied by highly volatile energy generation, which urges energy suppliers to use costly countermeasures to prevent energy imbalances, grid instabilities and power outages. Therefore, using demand-side approaches to shift flexible demand over time is a promising opportunity. In the case of electric vehicles, research papers mostly discuss vehicle drivers’ ind...

Effects of different types of cell phone use were examined through an analysis of selected data from the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS). Driving events involving lead-vehicle or approaching-vehicle incidents were analyzed to compare driver reaction times and crash probability across driver distraction type, driver age, and roadway environment. The analysis found that the median reaction...

AIM To investigate the opinions of newly licensed drivers towards the minimum age of car driver licensing, and reasons for getting a licence. METHOD The New Zealand Drivers Study (NZDS) is a prospective cohort study of 3992 newly licensed car drivers in New Zealand, recruited between 1 February 2006 and 31 January 2008 from driver licensing agencies and licensing courses throughout New Zealan...

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) can help to reduce transport emissions; however, user behaviour has a significant effect on the energy savings actually achieved in everyday usage. The present research aimed to advance understanding of HEV drivers' ecodriving strategies, and the challenges for optimal user-energy interaction. We conducted interviews with 39 HEV drivers who achieved above-average...

Despite recent reductions in motor vehicle injury rates in New Zealand, the rates for young drivers and especially young Māori drivers remain disproportionately high. This is commonly associated with driver inexperience and led to the development of road safety initiatives such as graduated driver licensing to increase beginner driver experience in low risk situations. There is anecdotal eviden...

To improve energy-use sustainability in cities, we proposed a set of urban energy performance assessment indicators and influencing factors based on existing theory and literature. An urban energy performance assessment and influencing factor model was also constructed by the improved stochastic frontier analysis method, and panel data from provincial capitals in China from 2004 to 2013 were co...

background: the high prevalence of obesity among commercial truck drivers may be related to sedentary nature of the job, lack of healthy eating choices, and lack of exercise. there may be a link between obesity and crash risk, therefore an intervention to reduce obesity in this population is needed. objective: to assess feasibility of a 12-week weight loss intervention for truck drivers with a ...

For the past two decades, China’s urbanization has attracted increasing attention from scholars around the world. Numerous insightful studies have attempted to determine the socioeconomic causes of the rapid urban growth in Chinese cities. However, most of these studies regarded each city as a single entity, with few considering inter-city relationships. The present study uses a gravity-based m...

The majority of humanity now lives in cities or towns, with this proportion expected to continue increasing for the foreseeable future. As novel ecosystems, urban areas offer an ideal opportunity to examine multi-scalar processes involved in community assembly as well as the role of human activities in modulating environmental drivers of biodiversity. Although ecologists have made great strides...