The regional differences between countries in traffic safety: A cross-cultural study and Turkish Case

Road traffic accidents are a large problem everywhere in the world. However, regional differences in traffic safety between countries are considerable. For example, traffic safety records are much worse in Southern Europe and the Middle East than in Northern and Western Europe. Despite the large regional differences in traffic safety, factors contributing to different accident risk figures in different countries and regions have remained largely unstudied. The general aim of this study was to investigate regional differences in traffic safety between Southern European/Middle Eastern (i.e., Greece, Iran, Turkey) and Northern/Western European (i.e., Finland, Great Britain, The Netherlands) countries and to identify factors related to these differences. We conducted seven sub-studies in which I applied a traffic culture framework, including a multi-level approach, to traffic safety. We used aggregated level data (national statistics), surveys among drivers, and data on traffic accidents and fatalities in the analyses. In the first study, we investigated the influence of macro level factors (i.e., economic, societal, and cultural) on traffic safety across countries. The results showed that a high GNP per capita and conservatism correlated with a low number of traffic fatalities, whereas a high degree of uncertainty avoidance, neuroticism, and egalitarianism correlated with a high number of traffic fatalities. In the second, third, and fourth studies, we examined whether the conceptualisation of road user characteristics (i.e., driver behaviour and performance) varied across traffic cultures and how these factors determined overall safety, and the differences between countries in traffic safety. The results showed that the factorial agreement for driver behaviour (i.e., aggressive driving) and performance (i.e., safety skills) was unsatisfactory in Greece, Iran, and Turkey, where the lack of social tolerance and interpersonal aggressive violations seem to be important characteristics of driving. In addition, we found that driver behaviour (i.e., aggressive violations and errors) mediated the relationship between culture/country and accidents. Besides, drivers from "dangerous" Southern European countries and Iran scored higher on aggressive violations and errors than did drivers from "safe" Northern European countries. However, "speeding" appeared to be a "pan-cultural" problem in traffic. Similarly, aggressive driving seems largely depend on road users' interactions and drivers' interpretation (i.e., cognitive biases) of the behaviour of others in every country involved in the study. Moreover, in all countries, a risky general driving style was mostly related to being young and male. The results of the fifth and sixth studies showed that among young Turkish drivers, gender stereotypes (i.e., masculinity and femininity) greatly influence driver behaviour and performance. Feminine drivers were safety-oriented whereas masculine drivers were skill-oriented and risky drivers. Since everyday driving tasks involve not only erroneous (i.e., risky or dangerous driving) or correct performance (i.e., normal habitual driving), but also "positive" driver behaviours, we developed a reliable scale for measuring "positive" driver behaviours among Turkish drivers in the seventh study. Consequently, I revised Reason's model [Reason, J. T., 1990. Human error. Cambridge University Press: New York] of aberrant driver behaviour to represent a general driving style, including all possible intentional behaviours in traffic while evaluating the differences between countries in traffic safety. The results emphasise the importance of economic, societal and cultural factors, general driving style and skills, which are related to exposure, cognitive biases as well as age, sex, and gender, in differences between countries in traffic safety.

Digital Photography in the Diagnosis and Follow-up of Ocular Diseases

Purpose: The aim of the present study was to develop and test new digital imaging equipment and methods for diagnosis and follow-up of ocular diseases. Methods: The whole material comprised 398 subjects (469 examined eyes), including 241 patients with melanocytic choroidal tumours, 56 patients with melanocytic iris tumours, 42 patients with diabetes, a 52-year old patient with chronic phase of VKH disease, a 30-year old patient with an old blunt eye injury, and 57 normal healthy subjects. Digital 50° (Topcon TRC 50 IA) and 45° (Canon CR6-45NM) fundus cameras, a new handheld digital colour videocamera for eye examinations (MediTell), a new subtraction method using the Topcon Image Net Program (Topcon corporation, Tokyo, Japan), a new method for digital IRT imaging of the iris we developed, and Zeiss photoslitlamp with a digital camera body were used for digital imaging. Results: Digital 50° red-free imaging had a sensitivity of 97.7% and two-field 45° and 50° colour imaging a sensitivity of 88.9-94%. The specificity of the digital 45°-50° imaging modalities was 98.9-100% versus the reference standard and ungradeable images that were 1.2-1.6%. By using the handheld digital colour video camera only, the optic disc and central fundus located inside 20° from the fovea could be recorded with a sensitivity of 6.9% for detection of at least mild NPDR when compared with the reference standard. Comparative use of digital colour, red-free, and red light imaging showed 85.7% sensitivity, 99% specificity, and 98.2 % exact agreement versus the reference standard in differentiation of small choroidal melanoma from pseudomelanoma. The new subtraction method showed growth in four of 94 melanocytic tumours (4.3%) during a mean ±SD follow-up of 23 ± 11 months. The new digital IRT imaging of the iris showed the sphincter muscle and radial contraction folds of Schwalbe in the pupillary zone and radial structural folds of Schwalbe and circular contraction furrows in the ciliary zone of the iris. The 52-year-old patient with a chronic phase of VKH disease showed extensive atrophy and occasional pigment clumps in the iris stroma, detachment of the ciliary body with severe ocular hypotony, and shallow retinal detachment of the posterior pole in both eyes. Infrared transillumination imaging and fluorescein angiographic findings of the iris showed that IR translucence (p=0.53), complete masking of fluorescence (p=0.69), presence of disorganized vessels (p=0.32), and fluorescein leakage (p=1.0) at the site of the lesion did not differentiate an iris nevus from a melanoma. Conclusions: Digital 50° red-free and two-field 50° or 45° colour imaging were suitable for DR screening, whereas the handheld digital video camera did not fulfill the needs of DR screening. Comparative use of digital colour, red-free and red light imaging was a suitable method in the differentiation of small choroidal melanoma from different pseudomelanomas. The subtraction method may reveal early growth of the melanocytic choroidal tumours. Digital IRT imaging may be used to study changes of the stroma and posterior surface of the iris in various diseases of the uvea. It contributed to the revealment of iris atrophy and serous detachment of the ciliary body with ocular hypotony together with the shallow retinal detachment of the posterior pole as new findings of the chronic phase of VKH disease. Infrared translucence and angiographic findings are useful in differential diagnosis of melanocytic iris tumours, but they cannot be used to determine if the lesion is benign or malignant.

Fatigued driving : prevalence, risk factors and groups, and the law

Fatigue and sleepiness are major causes of road traffic accidents. However, precise data is often lacking because a validated and reliable device for detecting the level of sleepiness (cf. the breathalyzer for alcohol levels) does not exist, nor does criteria for the unambiguous detection of fatigue/sleepiness as a contributing factor in accident causation. Therefore, identification of risk factors and groups might not always be easy. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to incorporate fatigue in operationalized terms into either traffic or criminal law. The main aims of this thesis were to estimate the prevalence of fatigue problems while driving among the Finnish driving population, to explore how VALT multidisciplinary investigation teams, Finnish police, and courts recognize (and prosecute) fatigue in traffic, to identify risk factors and groups, and finally to explore the application of the Finnish Road Traffic Act (RTA), which explicitly forbids driving while tired in Article 63. Several different sources of data were used: a computerized database and the original folders of multidisciplinary teams investigating fatal accidents (VALT), the driver records database (AKE), prosecutor and court decisions, a survey of young male military conscripts, and a survey of a representative sample of the Finnish active driving population. The results show that 8-15% of fatal accidents during 1991-2001 were fatigue related, that every fifth Finnish driver has fallen asleep while driving at some point during his/her driving career, and that the Finnish police and courts punish on average one driver per day on the basis of fatigued driving (based on the data from the years 2004-2005). The main finding regarding risk factors and risk groups is that during the summer months, especially in the afternoon, the risk of falling asleep while driving is increased. Furthermore, the results indicate that those with a higher risk of falling asleep while driving are men in general, but especially young male drivers including military conscripts and the elderly during the afternoon hours and the summer in particular; professional drivers breaking the rules about duty and rest hours; and drivers with a tendency to fall asleep easily. A time-of-day pattern of sleep-related incidents was repeatedly found. It was found that VALT teams can be considered relatively reliable when assessing the role of fatigue and sleepiness in accident causation; thus, similar experts might be valuable in the court process as expert witnesses when fatigue or sleepiness are suspected to have a role in an accident’s origins. However, the application of Article 63 of the RTA that forbids, among other things, fatigued driving will continue to be an issue that deserves further attention. This should be done in the context of a needed attitude change towards driving while in a state of extreme tiredness (e.g., after being awake for more than 24 hours), which produces performance deterioration comparable to illegal intoxication (BAC around 0.1%). Regarding the well-known interactive effect of increased sleepiness and even small alcohol levels, the relatively high proportion (up to 14.5%) of Finnish drivers owning and using a breathalyzer raises some concern. This concern exists because these drivers are obviously more focused on not breaking the “magic” line of 0.05% BAC than being concerned about driving impairment, which might be much worse than they realize because of the interactive effects of increased sleepiness and even low alcohol consumption. In conclusion, there is no doubt that fatigue and sleepiness problems while driving are common among the Finnish driving population. While we wait for the invention of reliable devices for fatigue/sleepiness detection, we should invest more effort in raising public awareness about the dangerousness of fatigued driving and educate drivers about how to recognize and deal with fatigue and sleepiness when they ultimately occur.

Professional Driving : An Emphasis on Organizational Safety Climate

According to the literature and statistical figures, professional drivers constitute a high-risk group in traffic and should be investigated in connection with the factors related to safe driving. However, safety-related behaviours and outcomes among professional drivers have attracted very little attention from safety researchers. In addition, comparing different professional and non-professional driver groups in terms of critical on-the-road characteristics and outcomes has been indicated in the literature as being necessary for a more comprehensive understanding of driver groups and the nature of driving itself. The aim of the present study was to investigate professional driving from a safety climate stand point in relation to predominant driving-related factors and by considering the differences between driver groups. Hence, four Sub-studies were conducted according to a framework emphasizing the relationships between safety climate, driver groups, driver stress, human factors (i.e., driver behaviour and performance) and accidents. Demographic information, as well as data for driver behaviour, performance, and driver stress was collected by questionnaire. The data was analysed using factor analysis, analysis of covariance as well as hierarchical and logistic regression analysis. The results revealed multi-dimensional factor structures for the safety climate measures. Considering the relationships between variables, differences were evidenced regarding on-the-road stress reactions, risky driver behaviours and penalties, between the various professional and non-professional driver groups. Driver stress was found to be related to accidents. The results also indicated that the safety climate has positive relationships with both driver behaviour and performance, and as well as involvement in accidents. The present study has a number of critical implications resulting from the fact that the way in which the effects of safety climate on professional driving were investigated, as well as the differences between professional and non-professional driver groups, was unique. Additionally, for the first time, a safety climate scale was developed specifically for professional drivers. According to the results of the study and to previous literature, a tentative model was proposed representing a possible route for the relationships between safety climate, human factors, driver stress, driver groups and accidents, by emphasizing the effects of safety climate.

Shooting from the Wild Zone : A Study of the Chicana Art Photographers Laura Aguilar, Celia Álvarez Muñoz, Delilah Montoya, and Kathy Vargas

The dissertation analyzes and elaborates upon the changing map of U.S. ethno-racial formation from the vantage point of North American Studies, multi-disciplinary cultural studies, and the criticism of visual culture. The focus is on four contemporary Mexican American (Chicana) women photographers, whose art production is discussed, on the one hand, in the context of the Euro-American history of photographic genres and, on the other hand, in the context of so-called decolonizing cultural and academic discourses produced by Mexican Americans themselves. The manuscript consists of two parts. Part I outlines the theoretical and methodological domain of the study, positioning it in the interstices of American studies, European postmodern criticism, postcolonial feminist theory, and the theories of visual culture, particularly of art photography. In addition, the main issues and paradigms of Chicano Studies (Mexican American ethnic studies) are introduced. Part II consists of seven essays, each of which discusses rather independently a particular photographic work or a series of photographs, formulating and defending arguments about their meaning, position in the history of photographic genres, and their cultural and socio-political significance. The study closes with a discussion about ethno-racial identity formation and the role of Chicana photography therein - in embodying and reproducing new subjectivities, alternative categories of knowledge, and open ended historical narratives. It is argued that, symbolically, the "Wild Zone" of gendered and race-specific knowledge becomes associated with the body of the mother, a recurrent image in Chicana art works under discussion. Embedded in this image, the construction of an alternative notion of a family thus articulates the parameters of a matrifocal ethno-racial community unified by the proliferation of differences rather than by conformities typical of nationalistic ideologies. While focusing on art photography, the study as a whole simultaneously constructs, from a European vantage point, a "thick" description of Mexican American history, identities, communities, cultural practices, and self-representations about which very little is known in Finland.

Ajan sisäkkäiset tilat. Arkkitehtuuri, valokuva ja menneisyyden esittäminen W. G. Sebaldin romaanissa Austerlitz

In her thesis, Kaisa Kaakinen analyzes how the German emigrant author W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) uses architecture and photography in his last novel "Austerlitz" to represent time, history and remembering. Sebald describes time in spatial terms: it is like a building, the rooms and chambers of which are connected to each other. The poetics of spatial time manifests itself on multiple levels of the text. Kaakinen traces it in architectural representations, photographic images, intertextuality, as well as in the form of the text, using the concept of spatial form by Joseph Frank. Architectural and photographic representations serve as meeting points for different aspects and angles of the novel and illustrate the idea of a layered present that has multiple connections to the past. The novel tells a story of Jacques Austerlitz, who as a small child was sent from Prague to Britain in one of the so-called Kindertransports that saved children from Central Europe occupied by the National Socialists. Only gradually he remembers his Jewish parents, who have most likely perished in Nazi concentration camps. The novel brings the problematic of writing about another person's past to the fore by the fact that Austerlitz's story is told by an anonymous narrator, Austerlitz's interlocutor, who listens to and writes down Austerlitz's story. Kaakinen devotes the final part of her thesis to study the demands of representing a historical trauma, drawing on authors such as Dominick LaCapra and Michael Rothberg. Through the analysis of architectural and photographic representations in the novel, she demonstrates how Austerlitz highlights the sense of singularity and inaccessibility of memories of an individual, while also stressing the necessity - and therefore a certain kind of possibility - of passing these memories to another person. The coexistence of traumatic narrowness and of the infinity of history is reflected in ambivalent buildings. Some buildings in the novel resemble reversible figures: they can be perceived simultaneously as ruins and as construction sites. Buildings are also shown to be able to both cover and preserve memories - an idea that also is repeated in the use of photography, which tends to both replace memories and cause an experience of the presence of an absent thing. Commenting and critisizing some recent studies on Sebald, the author develops a reading which stresses the ambivalence inherent in Sebald's view on history and historiography. Austerlitz shows the need to recognize the inevitable absence of the past as well as the distance from the experiences of others. Equally important, however, is the refusal to give up narrating the past: Sebald's novel stresses the necessity to preserve the sites of the past, which carry silent traces of vanished life. The poetics of Austerlitz reflects the paradox of the simultaneous impossibility and indispensability of writing history.

Rapsista tuotetun biodieselin ja vehnästä tuotetun bioetanolin energiavirrat ja ympäristövaikutukset Euroopan unionissa

The aim of this thesis was to study the crops currently used for biofuel production from the following aspects: 1. what should be the average yield/ ha to reach an energy balance at least 0 or positive 2. what are the shares of the primary and secondary energy flows in agriculture, transport, processing and usage, and 3. overall effects of biofuel crop cultivation, transport, processing and usage. This thesis concentrated on oilseed rape biodiesel and wheat bioethanol in the European Union, comparing them with competing biofuels, such as corn and sugarcane-based ethanol, and the second generation biofuels. The study was executed by comparing Life Cycle Assessment-studies from the EU-region and by analyzing them thoroughly from the differences viewpoint. The variables were the following: energy ratio, hectare yield (l/ha), impact on greenhouse gas emissions (particularly CO2), energy consumption in crop growing and processing one hectare of a particular crop to biofuel, distribution of energy in processing and effects of the secondary energy flows, like e.g. wheat straw. Processing was found to be the most energy consuming part in the production of biofuels. So if the raw materials will remain the same, the development will happen in processing. First generation biodiesel requires esterification, which consumes approximately one third of the process energy. Around 75% of the energy consumed in manufacturing the first generation wheat-based ethanol is spent in steam and electricity generation. No breakthroughs are in sight in the agricultural sector to achieve significantly higher energy ratios. It was found out that even in ideal conditions the energy ratio of first generation wheat-based ethanol will remain slightly under 2. For oilseed rape-based biodiesel the energy ratios are better, and energy consumption per hectare is lower compared to wheat-based ethanol. But both of these are lower compared to e.g. sugarcane-based ethanol. Also the hectare yield of wheat-based ethanol is significantly lower. Biofuels are in a key position when considering the future of the world’s transport sector. Uncertainties concerning biofuels are, however, several, like the schedule of large scale introduction to consumer markets, technologies used, raw materials and their availability and - maybe the biggest - the real production capacity in relation to the fuel consumption. First generation biofuels have not been the expected answer to environmental problems. Comparisons made show that sugarcane-based ethanol is the most prominent first generation biofuel at the moment, both from energy and environment point of view. Also palmoil-based biodiesel looks promising, although it involves environmental concerns as well. From this point of view the biofuels in this study - wheat-based ethanol and oilseed rape-based biodiesel - are not very competitive options. On the other hand, crops currently used for fuel production in different countries are selected based on several factors, not only based on thier relative general superiority. It is challenging to make long-term forecasts for the biofuel sector, but it can be said that satisfying the world's current and near future traffic fuel consumption with biofuels can only be regarded impossible. This does not mean that biofuels shoud be rejected and their positive aspects ignored, but maybe this reality helps us to put them in perspective. To achieve true environmental benefits through the usage of biofuels there must first be a significant drop both in traffic volumes and overall fuel consumption. Second generation biofuels are coming, but serious questions about their availability and production capacities remain open. Therefore nothing can be taken for granted in this issue, expect the need for development.

Analysis of Heterogeneous IP Traffic in Wireless Environment

Wireless access is expected to play a crucial role in the future of the Internet. The demands of the wireless environment are not always compatible with the assumptions that were made on the era of the wired links. At the same time, new services that take advantage of the advances in many areas of technology are invented. These services include delivery of mass media like television and radio, Internet phone calls, and video conferencing. The network must be able to deliver these services with acceptable performance and quality to the end user. This thesis presents an experimental study to measure the performance of bulk data TCP transfers, streaming audio flows, and HTTP transfers which compete the limited bandwidth of the GPRS/UMTS-like wireless link. The wireless link characteristics are modeled with a wireless network emulator. We analyze how different competing workload types behave with regular TPC and how the active queue management, the Differentiated services (DiffServ), and a combination of TCP enhancements affect the performance and the quality of service. We test on four link types including an error-free link and the links with different Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) persistency. The analysis consists of comparing the resulting performance in different configurations based on defined metrics. We observed that DiffServ and Random Early Detection (RED) with Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) are useful, and in some conditions necessary, for quality of service and fairness because a long queuing delay and congestion related packet losses cause problems without DiffServ and RED. However, we observed situations, where there is still room for significant improvements if the link-level is aware of the quality of service. Only very error-prone link diminishes the benefits to nil. The combination of TCP enhancements improves performance. These include initial window of four, Control Block Interdependence (CBI) and Forward RTO recovery (F-RTO). The initial window of four helps a later starting TCP flow to start faster but generates congestion under some conditions. CBI prevents slow-start overshoot and balances slow start in the presence of error drops, and F-RTO reduces unnecessary retransmissions successfully.