Trevor R. Hanson

Are age-based licensing restrictions a meaningful way to enhance rural older driver safety? The need for exposure considerations in policy development

The stated and revealed travel behavior of a sample of 60 rural drivers aged 54–92 years provided a basis to explore the potential effectiveness of two common drivers license restrictions aimed at older drivers: time of day and road class. The potential utility and impact of these restrictions have not been explored with revealed data for jurisdictions with a large population of rural older drivers where automobile dependence is high. Data were drawn from a multiday Global Positioning System–based travel diary survey of rural older drivers in New Brunswick, Canada. Revealed travel data showed that over 50 percent of the rural drivers in the sample did not drive after dark, and 40 percent drove less than 1 percent of their total surveyed kilometers on major highways, higher rates than from participant-stated responses. The proportion of participants taking night trips and traveling on major highways decreased with age. The majority of trips taken after dark by all participants had a rural destination. The average daily kilometers driven on major highways by men and women aged 75 years and older was nearly identical (1.79 km/day). These exposure considerations suggest that restricting night travel and major highway travel for the oldest rural drivers (75 years and older) may have limited utility given that the majority of participants did not drive in these situations, and for those who did, most of their trips were in rural areas where enforcement could be expected to be limited. A better approach may be to encourage increased self-regulation through training, age-friendly upgrades to transportation infrastructure to help rural older drivers stay driving safely as long as possible, and the development of appropriate rural alternatives to help a driver transition to nondriver.

Using Open Source Data to Quantify the Impact of Supply Chain Disruptions at Niche Ports: Scenario Involving Canada’s Largest Oil Refinery

Niche ports typically are smaller marine ports that specialize in handling specific commodities and can be the interface between import and export of bulk commodities from landside facilities, such as oil refineries. Specialization can make port-dependent industries and their customers particularly vulnerable to disruptions of port operations because the specialized handling facilities may be unique to the port. Industries may not be able to shift their supply to other modes, such as rail. This paper outlines the use of automatic identification system transponder data from oceangoing vessels, in concert with open source data, to quantify first-order impacts of a supply chain disruption at a niche port. Results are presented from a study of a Canadian niche port where a worst-reasonable-case scenario of a 1-week disruption to oil imports and exports would delay delivery of an estimated 246 million L of fuel to New England for at least a week; Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, would be most affected. The approach used in this study could be a valuable screening tool for public safety agencies wanting a better understanding of vulnerabilities and interdependencies at niche ports in situations in which detailed simulations and modeling are impractical.