OBJECTIVE Occupational hearing loss is common in the industrialized world. Road noise is a major contributor to perceived environmental noise. The objective of this study was to assess hearing loss in rickshaw drivers due to rickshaw noise. METHODS Hearing loss in rickshaw drivers and taxi drivers of Karachi who were 50 years of age or younger was estimated, with a Smith Hearing Screening (SH...

BACKGROUND The three-wheeler Qing-qi and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) auto-rickshaws were introduced in Karachi to meet the transportation demand of the growing population. These vehicles have directly or indirectly been implicated in a number of road traffic violations as well as road accidents. This study aims to describe the crash characteristics and injury patterns for Qing-qi rickshaw occu...

BACKGROUND National HIV serological and behavioural surveillance of Bangladesh repeatedly demonstrated a very high proportion of rickshaw pullers in Dhaka city, having sex with female sex workers (FSWs) and using illicit substances. However, no study has been conducted to identify the correlates of having sex with FSWs among this population. This study aimed to describe behavioural profile of r...

The conduction velocity of the motor nerve fibres of the peroneal and posterior tibial nerves was estimated in 38 rickshaw pullers and 25 human volunteers serving as controls. The mean values for motor conduction velocity were greater in the case of rickshaw pullers as compared to control subjects. However, the difference was statistically significant (P smaller than 0.05) for the peroneal nerv...

Most cities in India have high air and noise pollution caused by transport vehicles, especially petrol/diesel-powered three-wheelers. An improved and electric cycle rickshaw can provide a nonpolluting and silent transport system for urban and rural areas of India. It can also provide largescale employment to millions of urban and rural poor. Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute has developed...

OBJECTIVE We examined the personality correlates of accident-proneness of auto-rickshaw drivers in the Indian city of Ranchi. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study in which 50 male drivers aged 18-50 years, selected randomly from a list of licensed auto-rickshaw drivers in Ranchi, were assessed with a Hindi version of Cattell's 16 Personality Factors (16-PF) Questionnaire. RESULTS There ...

Dhaka is one of the crowded cities on earth. It has a population about 10 million. City roads are chocked with manual rickshaw, rickshaw vans, three wheeler auto-rickshaw (two stroke engine), buses, trucks, cars, microbus, minibus and even push carts. The only oil refinery at Chittagong still produces leaded gasoline high sulphur diesel. With advent civilization all around mechanization, scient...

Background: In urban environment, exposure to the emission of motor vehicles is common. In urban peoples it is a very difficult task to distinguish among peoples with different grades of momentous period exposure to such pollutants. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the effects of diesel exhaust, gasoline emission, Particulate Matter (PM) noise and heat on the reproductive...

A cross-sectional survey with convenience sampling was conducted among rickshaw drivers in Rawalpindi, Pakistan to study their road rage behaviour and experiences. Cumulatively 318 male drivers participated in this study. The most common forms of road rage reported were: having been shouted at; and having experienced rude gestures from other drivers (78.9% each). Least common forms of road rage...