Jean Andrey

The situational risks of young drivers: The influence of passengers, time of day and day of week on accident rates

This paper provides new insight into the situational risks of young drivers, especially in terms of the passenger effect. Two 1988 data bases from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation were used to estimate accident involvement rates by number of passengers, time of day and day of the week--first individually and then for all two-way combinations with the passenger variable. Accident data were derived from police reports for all accidents involving a fatality, personal injury or property damage exceeding

A TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF RAIN-RELATED CRASH RISK

700. Estimates of exposure were based on the most up-to-date provincial travel survey available at the time of the study. Results indicate that the accident involvement rates of 16-19 year old drivers are higher than those of 20-24 and 25-59 year olds in all situations that were examined, but that they were disproportionately high on weekends, at nighttime and with passengers. The results of the passenger variable are particularly interesting because, unlike weekends and nighttime, the negative effect of passengers on overall accident rates was evident only for 16-19 year old drivers. This effect was quite pronounced for both sexes, with accident involvement rates being approximately twice as high with passengers as without. For 16-19 year olds, accident rates were also significantly higher for two or more passengers versus one passenger. The highest rates for this age group occurred with passengers at nighttime. Possible explanations for these patterns and policy implications are discussed.

Vulnerability index construction: methodological choices and their influence on identifying vulnerable neighbourhoods

The study presents empirical evidence of accident risk during and following rain events in the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, Canada. The matched sample approach is used to examine data for 169 rain events and over 15,000 accidents that occurred during the years 1979-1983. The overall accident risk during rainfall conditions was found to be 70% higher than normal. The data suggest that accident risk returns to normal as soon as the rainfall has ended, despite the lingering effects of wet road conditions.

Driver Response to Rainfall on Urban Expressways

Indices are increasingly important for emergency planning at the community level, particularly with respect to identifying vulnerable neighbourhoods and mapping disaster potential. This paper provides both a critical literature review and an empirical case study that highlight the importance of different types of decisions in the construction of vulnerability indices. The case study focuses on the flooding risk in Vancouver, Canada, from both an evacuation and rebuilding perspective. Results of a sensitivity analysis suggest that spatial outcomes of vulnerability are highly sensitive to decisions regarding variable selection and representation, moderately sensitive to decisions about variable weighting and minimally affected by decisions about variable scaling.

Does Design Matter? The Ecological Footprint as a Planning Tool at the Local Level

The effects of light rainfall on urban freeway operations are modeled to improve understanding of road safety and speed-flow-occupancy relationships in suboptimal weather. Three broader issues also are addressed. What is the form of the relationship among various traffic variables under rainy versus dry conditions? Are the safety implications of driver adjustments under rainy conditions different for the day and night? How should speed variation be measured in ecological studies? Volume-occupancy and speed-volume relationships are affected by rainfall: specifically, speeds are reduced and speed is more strongly dependent on volume. Under nighttime, rainy, uncongested conditions, speeds are reduced and time gaps are increased, but only minimally. Under daytime rainfall conditions, when traffic volumes are typically high, speeds are reduced substantially, and because of the interaction between traffic variables, volumes also decrease. The physical time gap increases marginally as well, whereas speed variability within the traffic stream is reduced. For congested daytime conditions, light rainfall is not associated with any changes in volume or time gap, but speeds are reduced. Finally, safety-related information on speed deviation can be derived from traffic loop data by calculating the variability of travel speeds within small time units.

The Struggle for Life Balance: Work, Family, and Leisure in the Lives of Women Teleworkers

This paper provides a comparative environmental analysis of three subdivision designs for the same site: an ecovillage, a new-urbanist design and an up-scale estate subdivision. The comparison is based on ecological footprints (EF). Based on built form alone, the higher-density subdivisions resulted in lower EF. Consumption data were limited to the ecovillage, since this is the actual use of the study site, but comparisons were made with regional US averages. The study suggests that consumption contributes more to the overall footprint than built form. Qualitative information was used to explore how consumption is influenced by urban design and self-selection. Despite the challenges associated with data collection and conversion, it is argued that EF has utility for planners and urban designers because it enables assessment of built form from an environmental consumption point of view. The problem of the 21st century is how to live good and just lives within limits, in harmony with the earth and each other. Great cities can rise out of cruelty, deviousness, and a refusal to be bounded. Liveable cities can only be sustained out of humility, compassion, and acceptance of the concept of enough. (Donella Meadows, as cited in Beatley & Manning, 1997, p. 1)

Household Activity Rescheduling in Response to Automobile Reduction Scenarios

Abstract Contemporary life for many people in North America and elsewhere seems to be characterised by stress, role overload, and a lack of time for leisure. This is particularly true of employed women who are seeking to balance paid and unpaid work, family responsibilities, and leisure in an increasingly hurried society. This study investigated the everyday lives of women teleworkers, in order to examine the ways in which this type of work arrangement affected life balance. Fifteen women teleworkers, about half of whom had children at home, participated in in-depth interviews in which they discussed their work lives, their family and household activities, their leisure practices, and their perceptions of the impact of telework on their lives. The findings indicate that telework can contribute in a positive way to life balance for employed women. Home-based work provided enhanced work autonomy and a more relaxed work environment. Most of the women were able to develop strategies to resist the distraction of household obligations during their work day, and to help prevent the encroachment of work into the rest of their lives. At the same time, the flexibility of telework enabled them to be available for their children on a daily basis and this represented an expansion of their parenting role. While the women participated in family leisure activities, most of them reported a lack of personal leisure time. Thus life balance, in terms of work, family and leisure was rarely achieved. The implications of the study are discussed in terms of work autonomy, changing ideologies of parenthood, and the struggle for life balance.

Analysis of Precipitation-Related Motor Vehicle Collision and Injury Risk Using Insurance and Police Record Information for Winnipeg, Canada

Forecasting the enduring and wider implications of emerging travel demand management and automobile reduction policies has proved to be a challenging task. Travel behavior researchers point to the need for more in-depth research into the underlying activity-travel scheduling processes as a means to improve the ability to do so. The objective of this research is to explore the household rescheduling and adaptation process to vehicle reduction scenarios. Descriptive results from two, small-sample, in-depth experiments are presented. The first experiment focused on households’ response to a fuel prices increase, whereas the second focused on the response of two-vehicle households to long-term removal of one vehicle from the household. Results indicate that households are aware of a broad range of possible adaptation strategies, including not only mode changes but also a wide variety of changes in activities, planning, and longer-term lifestyle changes. When people were asked to actually implement such stated strategies under realistic conditions, a much more elaborate behavioral response was elicited. This included multiple rescheduling decisions involving several activities and household members over the course of a day or even several days. Thus, even relatively straightforward stated response strategies often lead to interconnected primary and secondary effects on observed activities and travel, realized through a sequence of rescheduling decisions over time and space and across household members. These results suggest that an explicit accounting of rescheduling decision sequences in forecasting models would enhance their behavioral validity and accuracy.

Mr. Dithers Comes to Dinner: Telework and the merging of women's work and home domains in Canada

INTRODUCTION Police records are the most common source of data used to estimate motor-vehicle collision risks, understand causal or contributing factors, and evaluate the efficacy of interventions. The literature notes concerns about this information citing discrepancies between police reports and other sources of injury occurrence and severity data. The primary objective of the analysis was to assess the adequacy of police reports for an examination of weather-related injury collision risk. METHOD Analyses of relative risk were carried out using both police records and comprehensive insurance claim data for Winnipeg, Canada over the period 1999-2001. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Both data sets yielded very similar results-precipitation substantially increases the risk of injury collision (police records: RR 1.76, CI 1.55-2.00; insurance: RR 1.80, CI 1.62-1.99) and risk of injury (police records, RR 1.74, CI 1.55-1.96; insurance, RR 1.69, CI 1.55-1.85) relative to corresponding dry weather control periods. Both rainfall and snowfall were associated with large increases in collisions and injuries. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY While relative risks are almost identical, over 64% more injury collisions and 74% more injuries were identified using the insurance data, which is an important difference for evaluating absolute risk and exposure.

Weather Forecast Use for Winter Recreation

Studies of home-based telework by women yield mixed results regarding the usefulness of telework in facilitating work–life balance. Most research on the social impacts of home-based telework focuses on workers—employees or self-employed—who deliberately choose that alternative work arrangement. Labour force analysts, however, predict an increase in employer-initiated teleworking. As a case study of the workforce of one large, financial-sector firm in Canada, this article considers the conditions of employment of involuntary teleworkers, those required by their employer to work full-time from a home office. In-depth interviews were co nducted with a sample of 18 female teleworkers working for the case study firm in a professional occupation. Study participants described the advantages and disadvantages of working from home, particularly with regard to spatial and social aspects of locating work in a home setting. The gendered nature of their jobs, and the caring and supportive functions they provide both through their employment and their household responsibilities are seen to support the relocation of their jobs from office to their homes. In many jurisdictions, telework is promoted as a means of giving women more flexibility to balance their paid work with their household responsibilities; the article highlights some of the contradictions involved in moving the workplace into womens homes.