In-vehicle railway level crossing warning systems : can intelligent transport systems deliver?

Intelligent Transport System (ITS) technology is seen as a cost-effective way to increase the conspicuity of approaching trains and the effectiveness of train warnings at level crossings by providing an in-vehicle warning of an approaching train. The technology is often seen as a potential low-cost alternative to upgrading passive level crossings with traditional active warning systems (flashing lights and boom barriers). ITS platforms provide sensor, localization and dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) technologies to support cooperative applications such as collision avoidance for road vehicles. In recent years, in-vehicle warning systems based on ITS technology have been trialed at numerous locations around Australia, at level crossing sites with active and passive controls. While significant research has been conducted on the benefits of the technology in nominal operating modes, little research has focused on the effects of the failure modes, the human factors implications of unreliable warnings and the technology adoption process from the railway industry’s perspective. Many ITS technology suppliers originate from the road industry and often have limited awareness of the safety assurance requirements, operational requirements and legal obligations of railway operators. This paper aims to raise awareness of these issues and start a discussion on how such technology could be adopted. This paper will describe several ITS implementation cenarios and discuss failure modes, human factors considerations and the impact these scenarios are likely to have in terms of safety, railway safety assurance requirements and the practicability of meeting these requirements. The paper will identify the key obstacles impeding the adoption of ITS systems for the different implementation scenarios and a possible path forward towards the adoption of ITS technology.

Organizational work-related road safety situational analysis: More than just an audit tool

Although safety statistics indicate that road crashes are the most common form of work-related fatalities, many organizations fail to treat company vehicles in the same manner as other physical safety hazards within the workplace. Traditionally, work-related road safety has targeted primarily driver-related issues and not adequately addressed organizational processes, such as the organizations’ safety system and risk management processes and practice. This inadequacy generally stems from a lack of specific contextual knowledge and basic requirements to improve work-related road safety, including the supporting systems to ensure any intervention strategy or initiative’s ongoing effectiveness. Therefore, informed by previous research and based on a case study methodology, the Organizational Work-Related Road Safety Situational Analysis was developed to assess organizations’ current work-related road safety system, including policy, procedures, processes and practice. The situational analysis tool is similar to a safety audit however is more comprehensive in detail, application and provides sufficient evidence to enable organizations to mitigate and manage their work-related road safety risks. In addition, data collected from this process assists organizations in making informed decisions regarding intervention strategy design, development, implementation and ongoing effectiveness. This paper reports on the effectiveness of the situational analysis tool to assess WRRS systems across five differing and diverse organizations; including gas exploration and mining, state government, local government, and not for profit/philanthropy. The outcomes of this project identified considerable differences in the degree by which the organizations’ addressed work-related road safety across their vehicle fleet operations and provides guidelines for improving organizations’ work-related road safety systems.

The alcohol culture of mature-aged women : similarities and differences across borders

Introduction: Relatively few attempts have been made to describe and understand women’s alcohol consumption beyond adolescence and young adulthood. In particular, there has been a lack of studies focusing on the alcohol culture that surrounds and guides mature-aged women’s drinking. As part of a larger cross-national comparison, the present study sought to address this gap by identifying the shared beliefs and values that impact on drinking outcomes among mature-aged women in Sweden and Australia. Method: The study was guided by an ethnographic methodology. To generate data, a series of semi-structured interview were conducted with 17 Australian (age = 45-57 years; M = 52.1, SD = 3.9) and 19 Swedish (age = 45-58 years; M = 52.2, SD = 4.8) women. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Results: With age, the focus of alcohol as a single purpose vehicle for intoxication had given way to a focus on the enjoyment and ritual of drinking itself; taste had become increasingly important and alcohol was strongly associated with pleasurable environments and experiences. The view of alcohol as a taste experience was particularly pronounced among the Swedish women, with alcohol (most commonly wine) often seen as inseparable from food. Among the Swedish women, this view of alcohol was also associated with a strong de-emphasis of the pharmacological effects of alcohol. In contrast, several Australian women understood and used alcohol as relief for anxiety and stress. Moderate drinking was linked to the social construction of both age and gender in the two samples, while heavy or abusive alcohol consumption was associated with strong proscriptive norms and stigma. Conclusions: Australian and Swedish women share a number of beliefs and values around alcohol, however, these findings also show unique country-level differences. Implications for drinking outcomes are discussed.

Driver’s over-trust on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems on passively protected railway crossings

Passively protected railway crossings are a major rail safety issue in Australia. Such crossings cannot be upgraded as such crossings are too numerous and the cost involved is prohibitive. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have been shown to improve road safety and are widely used. These systems could be a solution to improve safety of passively protected crossings at a lower cost. Such complementary ADAS could result in driver’s over-trust due to the absence of Humane Machine Interface reflecting the quality of the information or the state of the ADAS (failure status). This paper demonstrates that driver’s exposure to crossing exhibiting fail-safe and non-fail safe properties could result in improperly allocating trust between technologies. We conducted a driving simulator study where participants (N=58) were exposed to three types of level crossing warning system on passive and active crossings. The results show that a significant proportion of participants over-trust the ADAS. Such drivers exhibit the same driving performance with the ADAS as when exposed to infrastructure based active crossing protection. They do not take the necessary safety precautions as they have a faster speed approach, reduced number of gaze toward the rail tracks and fail to stop at the crossing.

Improving the railway’s understanding of accident causation through an integrated approach to human factors analysis and technical safety data recording

This paper describes a safety data recording and analysis system that has been developed to capture safety occurrences including precursors using high-definition forward-facing video from train cabs and data from other train-borne systems. The paper describes the data processing model and how events detected through data analysis are related to an underlying socio-technical model of accident causation. The integrated approach to safety data recording and analysis insures systemic factors that condition, influence or potentially contribute to an occurrence are captured both for safety occurrences and precursor events, providing a rich tapestry of antecedent causal factors that can significantly improve learning around accident causation. This can ultimately provide benefit to railways through the development of targeted and more effective countermeasures, better risk models and more effective use and prioritization of safety funds. Level crossing occurrences are a key focus in this paper with data analysis scenarios describing causal factors around near-miss occurrences. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the system can also be applied to other types of railway safety occurrences.

A runtime integrity monitoring framework for real-time relative positioning systems based on GPS and DSRC

This paper provides a three-layered framework to monitor the positioning performance requirements of Real-time Relative Positioning (RRP) systems of the Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) that support Cooperative Collision Warning (CCW) applications. These applications exploit state data of surrounding vehicles obtained solely from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) units without using other sensors. To this end, the paper argues the need for the GPS/DSRC-based RRP systems to have an autonomous monitoring mechanism, since the operation of CCW applications is meant to augment safety on roads. The advantages of autonomous integrity monitoring are essential and integral to any safety-of-life system. The autonomous integrity monitoring framework proposed necessitates the RRP systems to detect/predict the unavailability of their sub-systems and of the integrity monitoring module itself, and, if available, to account for effects of data link delays and breakages of DSRC links, as well as of faulty measurement sources of GPS and/or integrated augmentation positioning systems, before the information used for safety warnings/alarms becomes unavailable, unreliable, inaccurate or misleading. Hence, a monitoring framework using a tight integration and correlation approach is proposed for instantaneous reliability assessment of the RRP systems. Ultimately, using the proposed framework, the RRP systems will provide timely alerts to users when the RRP solutions cannot be trusted or used for the intended operation.

Radiation therapist peer review: Raising the bar on quality and safety in radiation oncology

Purpose An emerging developmental tool to help radiation therapists achieve better outcomes is 'peer review'. This review of the current literature summarises the challenges and benefits of peer review in both individual and departmental practice. Discussion There is compelling evidence supporting peer review implementation at both individual and department level in many professions. Implementing peer review requires that radiation therapists and other radiation oncology professionals embrace a culture that supports safety. Peer review can identify trends and barriers associated with quality radiotherapy and share best practice or recommend changes accordingly. Support for peer review must come from pre-registration educational systems as well as clinical managers. Continuing professional development in the workplace is nurtured by peer review of radiotherapy practice and an aptitude for this should be viewed as important to the profession as technical and clinical skills. Conclusion It is clear that peer review has the potential to facilitate reflective practice, improve staff motivation and help foster a culture of quality and safety in radiation oncology. To drive the issues of quality and safety a step further radiation therapists need to accept the challenge of adopting peer review methods in day-to-day practice.

A qualitative exploration of young Australian adults’ understanding of and explanations for alcohol-involved rape

Little is known about the beliefs that underlie the biased attributions that typically characterise people’s perceptions of intoxicated sexual perpetrators and their victims. Guided by consensual qualitative research, we explored young Australian adults’ (18-25 years; N = 15) attributions for an alcohol-involved rape based on focus groups and interviews. Prominent themes indicated that participants rarely labelled the assault as rape and, instead, adhered to miscommunication explanations. Participants emphasised the developmental value of the victimisation experience although recognising its harmful consequences. Both perpetrator and victim were held strongly responsible based on perceived opportunities to prevent the assault but implicit justifications were, nevertheless, evident. As such, explicit and implicit attributions were contradictory, with the latter reflecting the attributional double standard previously observed in quantitative rape-perception research. Findings underscore the need to challenge pervasive rape myths and equip young adults with knowledge on how to respond supportively to the commonly stigmatised victims of rape.

Boosting the effects of a curriculum based injury prevention program through a school connectedness intervention : final report to NRMA-ACT Road Safety Trust

Injury is the leading cause of death among young people (AIHW, 2008). A primary contributing factor to injury among adolescents is risk taking behaviour, including road related risks such as risky bicycle and motorcycle use and riding with dangerous or drink-drivers. Injury rates increase dramatically throughout adolescence, at the same time as adolescents are becoming more involved in risk taking behaviour. Also throughout this period, adolescents‟ connectedness to school is decreasing (Monahan, Oesterle & Hawkins, 2010; Whitlock, 2004). School connectedness refers to „the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school‟ (Goodenow, 1993, p. 80), and has been repeatedly shown to be a critical protective factor in adolescent development. For example, school connectedness has been shown to be associated with decreased risk taking behaviour, including violence and alcohol and other drug use (e.g., Resnick et al., 1997), as well as with decreased transport risk taking and vehicle related injuries (Chapman et al., accepted April 2011). This project involved the pilot evaluation of a school connectedness intervention (a professional development program for teachers) to reduce adolescent risk taking behaviour and injury. This intervention has been developed for use as a component of the Skills for Preventing Injury in Youth (SPIY) curriculum based injury prevention program for early adolescents. The objectives of this research were to: 1. Implement a trial School Connectedness intervention (professional development program for teachers) in ACT high schools, and evaluate using comparison high schools. 2. Determine whether the School Connectedness program impacts on adolescent risk taking behaviour and associated injuries (particularly transport risks and injuries). 3. Evaluate the process effectiveness of the School Connectedness program.

Reducing rear-end crashes with cooperative systems

This paper presents an evaluation of the effectiveness of a cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) to reduce rear-end crashes. Two complementary simulation techniques are used to demonstrate the benefits of the C-ITS. A traffic (VEINS) and sensor (SiVIC) simulations use realistic data related to traffic/road in Brisbane’s Pacific Motorway, driver’s reaction time and injury severity to evaluate benefits. The results of our simulations show that C-ITS could reduce rear-end crash risk by providing several seconds of additional warning to drivers.

Safe Design Project : Review of occupational health and safety legal requirements for designers, manufacturers, suppliers, importers and other relevant obligation bearers

In seeking to achieve Australian workplaces free from injury and disease NOHSC works to lead and coordinate national efforts to prevent workplace death, injury and disease. We seek to achieve our mission through the quality and relevance of information we provide and to influence the activities of all parties with roles in improving Australia’s OHS performance. NOHSC has five strategic objectives: • improving national data systems and analysis, • improving national access to OHS information, • improving national components of the OHS and related regulatory framework, • facilitating and coordinating national OHS research efforts, • monitoring progress against the National OHS Improvement Framework. This publication is a contribution to achieving those objectives

Regulating supply chains to improve health and safety

The fragmentation of previously integrated systems of production and service delivery has been an important feature of organisational restructuring over the last three decades. This article highlights the adverse implications of this development for the health and safety of workers, examines the extent to which current British health and safety law provides an adequate framework for addressing these outcomes and explores whether its capacity to do so could be enhanced through the introduction of new statutory provisions on the regulation of supply chains. It concludes that, in terms of both structure and operation, the present framework of law is problematic. It further argues that recent international initiatives show that it is feasible to develop such statutory provisions and that existing evidence suggests that provisions of this type could usefully be introduced in respect of a number of areas of activity where the implications of the externalisation of production and service delivery seem particularly problematic.

Safety, courts and crime: occupational safety and health prosecutions in the Magistrates' courts

This paper reports on an empirically based study of occupational safety and health prosecutions in the Magistrates' courts in the State of Victoria, Australia. It examines the way in which the courts construct occupational safety and health issues during prosecutions against alleged offenders, and then theorises the role of the criminal law in health and safety regulation. The paper argues that courts, inspectors, prosecutors and defence counsel are involved in filtering or reshaping occupational safety and health issues during the prosecution process, both pre-trial and in court. An analysis of the pattern of investigation of health and safety offences shows that they are constructed by focusing on 'events', in most cases incidents resulting in injury or death. This 'event focus' ensures that the attention of the parties is drawn to the details of the incident and away from the broader context of the event. This broader context includes the way in which work is organised at the workplace and the quality of occupational safety and health management (the micro context), and the pressures within capitalist production systems for occupational safety and health to be subordinated to production imperatives (the macro context). In particular, during the court-based sentencing process, defence counsel is able to adopt a range of 'isolation' techniques that isolate the incident from its micro and macro contexts, thereby individualising and decontextualising the incident. The paper concludes that the legal system plays a key role in decontextualising and individualising health and safety issues, and that this process is part of the 'architecture' of the legal system, and a direct consequence of the 'form of law'.

Supply chain regulation to protect the occupational health and safety of vulnerable workers

The last two decades have witnessed a fragmentation of previously integrated systems of production and service delivery with the advent of boundary-less, networked and porous organisational forms. This trend has been associated with the growth of outsourcing and increased use of contingent workers. One consequence of these changes is the development of production/service delivery systems based on complex national and international networks of multi-tiered subcontracting increasingly labelled as supply chains. A growing body of research indicates that subcontracting and contingent work arrangements affect design and decision-making processes in ways that can seriously undermine occupational health and safety (OHS). Elaborate supply chains also present a regulatory challenge because legal responsibility for OHS is diffused amongst a wider array of parties, targeting key decision-makers is more difficult, and government agencies encounter greater logistical difficulties trying to safeguard contingent workers. In a number of industries these problems have prompted new forms of regulatory intervention, including mechanisms for sheeting legal responsibility to the top of supply chains, contractual tracking devices and increasing industry, union and community involvement in enforcement. After describing the problems just alluded to this paper examines recent efforts to regulate supply chains to safeguard OHS in the United Kingdom and Australia.