Risk factors associated with truck-involved fatal crash severity: Analyzing their impact for different groups of truck drivers

Introduction: Fatal crashes that include at least one fatality of an occupant within 30 days of the crash cause large numbers of injured persons and property losses, especially when a truck is involved. Method: To better understand the underlying effects of truck-driver-related characteristics in fatal crashes, a five-year (from 2012 to 2016) dataset from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) was used for analysis. Based on demographic attributes, driving violation behavior, crash histories, and conviction records of truck drivers, a latent class clustering analysis was applied to classify truck drivers into three groups, namely, ‘‘middle-aged and elderly drivers with low risk of driving violations and high historical crash records,” ‘‘drivers with high risk of driving violations and high historical crash records,” and ‘‘middle-aged drivers with no driving violations and conviction records.” Next, equivalent fatalities were used to scale fatal crash severities into three levels. Subsequently, a partial proportional odds (PPO) model for each driver group was developed to identify the risk factors associated with the crash severity. Results' Conclusions: The model estimation results showed that the risk factors, as well as their impacts on different driver groups, were different. Adverse weather conditions, rural areas, curved alignments, tractor-trailer units, heavier weights and various collision manners were significantly associated with the crash severities in all driver groups, whereas driving violation behaviors such as driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, fatigue, or carelessness were significantly associated with the high-risk group only, and fewer risk factors and minor marginal effects were identified for the low-risk groups. Practical Applications: Corresponding countermeasures for specific truck driver groups are proposed. And drivers with high risk of driving violations and high historical crash records should be more concerned.     

A summary and synthesis of procedural regulations and standards—Informing a procedures writer's guide

Well-written procedures are an integral part of any industrial organization for safe operation, managing risks, and continuous improvement. Regulatory bodies around the world require industries to have current, accurate, and appropriate procedures for most processes. Although the importance of procedures is recognized by all industries in general, significant incidents still occur due to procedural breakdowns. Some of the procedural breakdowns come from obvious problems such as the procedure not being available or the procedure being wrong. However, some incidents have occurred when correct procedures were available and the operator used those procedures. In these instances, the reason workers do not follow procedures correctly may be attributable the procedure being presented or designed in a manner that does not sufficiently communicate the information in a manner that is easily and quickly understood. This indicates that procedure writers may need more guidance on how to write and design procedures so they accomplish this. To effectively manage risk, procedures need to be technically correct (and regulatory compliant) and usable. As part of this, the current work is focused on developing a systematic approach to a procedure writer's guide that includes a regulatory compliant component. The work presented here consists of an effort to identify procedure-writing practices necessary to ensure regulatory compliance by summarizing a large sample of regulations and standards from several industries. The regulations and standards were organized to reflect common ideas and the implications in terms of human factors needs for procedure design were identified. This information will be used as part of the development of a writer's guide that accounts for human factors (HF) that includes explanations of HF implications and empirical support for each of the guidelines. The novelty of the method and information presented here is in the idea of leveraging the cumulative information available regarding procedures in regulations and standards. Incorporating this information into a procedure's writers guide in this manner may not only facilitate procedure being regulatory compliant for facilities in different geographies of the world, but could also support their being written with considerations for human performance.     

A taxonomy of performance influencing factors for human reliability analysis of emergency tasks

This paper introduces the process for, and the result of, the selection of performance influencing factors (PIFs) for the use in human reliability analysis (HRA) of emergency tasks in nuclear power plants. The approach taken in this study largely consists of three steps. First, a full-set PIF system is constructed from the collection and review of existing PIF taxonomies. Secondly, PIF candidates are selected from the full-set PIF system, considering the major characteristics of emergency situations and the basic criteria of PIF for use in HRA. Finally, a set of PIFs is established by structuring representative PIFs and their detailed subitems from the candidates. As a result, a set of PIFs comprised of the 11 representative PIFs and 39 subitems was developed.     

Joint analysis of process and operator performance in chemical process operational safety

Independent studies of case histories by the Health and Safety Commission in the UK and by a Honeywell led industrial consortium world-wide showed that human errors represent the major cause of failure in process plant operation. In contrast to this discovery the majority of previous studies on computer aided systems for fault detection and diagnosis has focused on the process side. This paper presents a methodology, which can involve human factors into the development of systems for automatic identification and diagnosis of abnormal operations and develops methods and techniques that can be used to simultaneously capture, characterise and assess the performance of operators as well as of the process. A joint process–operator simulation platform is developed which is used as a test-bed for carrying out the study. The process part is a simulator, which simulates in high fidelity the dynamic behaviour of the process that is subject to the influence of various disturbances and operators’ interventions. The operator module is developed as a real-time expert system, which emulates operator’s behaviour in interpretation of received signals, and planning and execution of decisions. The interaction between the two modules is managed through an interaction module, which handles the real-time exchange of data using Dynamic Data Exchange. The interaction module also contains the toolkits for analysing the dynamic behaviour of the joint process–operator system. The method and system are illustrated using a simulated case study.     

非点源污染影响因素及区域差异

随着点源污染控制加强,非点源问题更加突出。污染时间、方式、总量的三不确定给农业环境管理带来困难,控制措施难以有效实施,特别是农业非点源污染日益加剧,水环境质量不断恶化。从污染产生过程,结合污染特征,分析了非点源污染汇污的各种影响因素,包括污染物现存总量及变化趋势和环境净化能力、农业生产活动及管理水平、气候和水文条件;特别提出社会经济活动对污染影响显著;指出主导影响因子的时空变化,并存在地域差异。强调了在三峡库区开展基础调查工作和建立污染数据库的必要性,以期为库区农业环境质量现状评价和总体控制措施的筛选提供科学依据。     

Fenton试剂在处理难降解有机废水中的应用

介绍了Ferton试剂的作用机理,探讨了不同外界因素对该技术处理效果的影响,对该试剂在实际中的应用进行阐述。并提出Fenton试剂的研究方向。     

个人因素事故致因模型的探讨

从个人因素事故致因模型出发．探讨了潜在危险存在的情况下．个人因素与事故发生之间的联系;分析了不同的个人因素对于潜在危险的感知认识的作用和影响以及由此而决定的工作行为的安全程度;讨论了以控制导致事故发生的个人因素为出发点．用以预防事故发生的对策措施;提出在现代安全科学领域中,不仅要解决职工安全生产技术方面的问题．更要强调职工个人的社会性,在工作之中的成就感,被尊重的程度．这样才能达到充分激励职工、加强安全生产的目的。     

Research on 10-year tendency of China coal mine accidents and the characteristics of human factors

The trend of China coal mine accidents in the latest 10 years was studied and the human factors in these accidents were analyzed by multi-dimensional statistic analysis. It shows that the number of major coal mine accidents and the death toll in the accidents were decreasing steadily, while sporadic death accidents still accounted for the largest percentage of deaths. Gas outburst accidents, gas explosion accidents and mine water accidents remained the major part of the whole story and subject to close attention. Among the causes of these accidents, human factors accounted for 94.09%, of which intentional violation, mismanagement and defective design accounted for 35.43%, 55.12%, 3.54% respectively. Improper operational and management practices in which the safety system, procedures and specifications were neglected or broken were still key roots of China coal mine accidents.     

基于熵权-HDT的航空器维修人误概率确定

人误是造成民用航空维修差错的主要因素。为确定不同情境下人误发生概率,结合某维修基地具体情况,采用熵权法确定主要的影响因子,并基于全决策树法分析主要影响因子对航空器维修人误概率的影响程度。计算结果显示,该维修基地人因可靠性的主要影响因子包括航空器维修人员的安全态度、技能、沟通、工作环境、压力以及工段长领导能力。根据各主要影响因子的不同品质描述等级组合,确定该情境下航空器维修人员的人误概率。鉴于该维修基地人因可靠性影响最明显的因子是"沟通",提出信息及时交流、明确沟通重要性等解决措施。     

城市安全生产影响因素及其预测分析——以上海为例

为研究我国城市安全生产的影响因素及预测城市安全生产的发展趋势,以上海市为例,对2004—2010年期间与安全生产相关的数据进行灰色关联度分析,提取影响安全生产状况的主要经济社会因素,并与工矿商贸死亡人数之间建立回归模型。研究结果表明,工矿商贸死亡人数与第二产业比重、GDP增长率、教育支出占GDP比重以及私营及个体工商户比例均呈现负相关。基于2007—2011年各月份上海市的安全生产死亡人数,运用Winters乘法模型,预测上海市安全生产发展趋势。