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NEWS
This is where we'll announce the most recent additions to our web site. If you've visited us before and want to know what's changed, take a look here first, if you like. Here you will also find Safety related articles newly posted to the site. Periodically these articles will be moved to the Focus On Safety page, now under construction.
(08/06/02) Recent changes to this site include the Web published version of the paper Motorcycle Rider Fatigue: Survey Results.
Recent Notes And Issues You are strongly encouraged to comment on these and any other safety issues of interest. At the center of concerns, reactions and changes regarding accidents is safety. Prevention, although not typically the media headline, pays much higher dividends than cure. Safety measures, although generally studied and implemented with cautious moderation, are affected by the knowledge, attitudes and mores of the times. Examples include airbags, crosswalks and speed limits. Your comments and information are welcomed. Please use the FEEDBACK page. We also welcome your thoughts on how this Focus On Safety addition to this Web Site can be more fully implemented to affect positive change. Making Pedestrian Safety Clothing More Visible ASTM Subcommittee E12.08 is currently developing standards for making pedestrian safety clothing more visible during the day and at night. The nighttime conditions standard has been published, including specifications for color, intensity, and coverage of retroreflective material. The daytime standard will include specifications for color, brightness, and coverage of fluorescent materials. The work of this ASTM Subcommittee is unique in that the standards involve the factor of human perception. Furthermore, the standards address a variety of at risk pedestians, including casual walkers, professional users (e.g., parking attendants and crossing guards) and industrial applications (e.g., highway construction and airport workers). These "classes" of pedestians follow those of the model set by the European high visibility clothing standards. The Subcommittee's efforts, during a May 17, 1997 workshop, concentrated on determining a method to quantify the conspicuity or attention-getting value of various materials. Participants used a method of limited exposure to the stimulus, which would appear at various distances and offsets. Excerpted from Research and Technology Transporter as printed in Accident Investigation Quarterly. New Safety Video To Protect Newborns In Vehicles Segments of the federal government and the automobile manufacturing industry are planning to distribute 100,000 copies of an instructional safety video, "Protecting Your Newborn," to childbirth educators, hospitals and physicians. This 29-minute video "...will show parents how to keep their infant children safe in an air bag-equipped car..." The video can be used without an instructor through hospital in-house video systems and in physicians waiting rooms. An instructor's guide with curriculum materials and parent handouts is available for use by childbirth educators and others who teach prenatal classes and who wish to use the video in classroom settings. Agencies that helped develop the content for the video were the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Transportation Safety Board. NHTSA produced the video, with funding for distribution from Ford Motor Company, as part of a comprehensive strategy to preserve the benefits of airbags while minimizing their risks to children and certain adults. NHTSA recently amended its crash protection standard to allow manufacturers additional leeway in producing less powerful air bags; extended its policy of permitting manufacturers to install manual cutoff switches in vehicles without back seats or back seats too small for child safety seats; and required new, highly visible warning labels for all new cars, light trucks and child safety seats. Excerpted from DOT Press Release as printed in Accident Investigation Quarterly.
Go to FEEDBACK to submit comments and information.
Last modified: February 08, 2005 |
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