• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.150-156
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• 2017

A frozen road surface increases traffic accidents during the winter season. Hence, information on easily-frozen road sections and their specificities are required to prevent traffic accidents. Frozen road surfaces are determined by equipment measuring road surface temperatures. However, there are limitations in investigating the entire road network. Therefore, it is imperative to develop new methods that effectively determine road surface freezing risks. Meteorologically, road surfaces are frozen when the actual temperature cools down to the dew point temperature. Under this condition, there is likely to be frost if relative humidity reaches 100% and frozen road surfaces as the temperature gets lower. Meteorological characteristics give us an alternative to a direct measurement road surface temperature to estimate risks of road surface freezing. Based on the clues, the relationship between severity of traffic accidents and temperature changes is empirically investigated using Paju weather data. The results reveal that as the temperature gets lower and changes in current temperature are relatively small, the severity of traffic accidents become higher. In addition, the same is true when the difference between current temperature and the dew point temperature is relatively small, as it increases possibilities of road surface freezing. Future studies must investigate how current temperature and the dew point temperature affect road surface freezing and thereby establish a time-space scope to estimate possible road surface freezing sections using only weather and road material type data. This would provide invaluable information for predicting and preventing frozen road accidents based on weather patterns.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.44-52
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• 2018

Objective : The present study had examined the psychiatric symptoms and physical health consequences for the bereaved parents of the high school students who died in the 2014 Sewol ferry accident. Methods : Forty bereaved parents participated in the study. The authors administered self-report questionnaires about the parents' health behaviors and psychiatric symptoms. The authors also conducted laboratory tests to assess the parents' physical health at 18 and 30 months after the accident. Univariate descriptive statistics were performed to report the prevalence and severity of psychiatric symptoms and health-related behaviors. Paired t-test and Mcnemar test were performed to compare the 18-and 30-month findings. Correlation analysis between psychiatric symptoms and laboratory findings were performed to find a relationship between the two variables. Results : At 30 months after the accident, most of the bereaved parents still appeared to suffer from complicated grief (97.5%), post traumatic stress disorder (80%), insomnia (77.5%) and severe depression (62.5%) based on the scores on the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG), the PTSD Check List-5 (PCL-5), the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). One quarter of the bereaved parents reported high-risk drinking, and 47.5% reported increased drinking amount and frequency after the accident. In objective laboratory results, 55% of the bereaved parents were obese as defined by body mass index ${\geq}25$. The parents' mean low-density lipoprotein shows a significant increase over time (118.5 mg/dL at 18 months. vs. 132.5 mg/dL at 30 months. paired t-test t=-4.061, $$p{\leq_-}0.001$$). Total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein at 30 months after the accident were in clinically borderline high range. In correlation analysis, triglyceride was positively correlated with ISI. Conclusion : The loss of children in the Sewol ferry accident, a disaster caused by human error, continued to have considerable impact on the victims' parents' mental and physical health 18 and 30 months after the accident. A longitudinal study following the parents' physical health would be necessary to investigate the long-term effects of this traumatic experience on physical health.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.118-127
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• 2009

This study tries to develop model in order to assess personal factors of senior traffic accidents that are widely recognized as one of the social problems. For the current practice. it gathers data (Simulation & Questionnaire Survey) of KOTSA and conducts Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression Analysis to develop traffic accident severity model. The results show that elderly drivers' accidents are mainly affected by attentiveness selection, velocity prediction ability and attentiveness distribution ability in a positive(+) way. Second, non-senior drivers' accidents are also positively(+) influenced by attentiveness selection, velocity prediction, distance perception, attentiveness distribution ability and attentiveness diversion ability. Therefore, influencing factors of senior and non-senior drivers to vehicle accidents are different. This eventually poses a indication that preliminary education for car accident prevention should be implemented based up[n the distinction between senior drivers and non-senior drivers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.138-146
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• 2020

Stow net fishery is one of the fishery with high fishing work accidents in southwestern sea of Korea. We conducted to serve as basic data for improving the healthy and safe working environment of fisher using risk assessment process (ISO45001) with fishermen's occupational accidents of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative (NFFC) from 2016 to 2018. The average occurrence rate of victim in this fishery was 9.04%, 16.7 times more than such rate in all industries. In addition, the average fatality rate was found to have a very serious level management to 31.06‱, 27.7 times more than such rate in all industries. The safety hazards of stow net fishery was more likely to occur by other general industrial groups, with more severe consequences after the accident. According to 4M analysis, 58.6% of all accidents were caused by human factors, 24.0% by environmental factors, 16.0% by mechanical factors, and 1.5% by managerial factors, respectively. The occurrence frequency by accident type was the highest in 187 cases (32.2%) for struck by object, 158 cases (27.2%) for slipping, and 94 cases (16.2%) for being in contact with machinery. Severity is the highest for others such as diseases etc., in the order of being struck by object, being in contact with machinery, falling from above slipping, collapsing, bumping, and burning. Being struck by object, being in contact with machinery, and slipping are high-risk groups, falling from above others, bumping, and burning are medium-risk groups based on the risk assessment using the occurrence frequency and severity of accident. The obtained results are expected to contribute to the safe operation environment subsidy for fishing crews on the stow net fishing vessel.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.135-142
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• 2016

Objective: Objective of this study is to provide characteristics of injury frequency and severity by driving condition in large truck-related traffic collisions. Background: Traffic accidents involving large trucks draw a lot of attention in accident prevention and management policies since they bring about severe human and financial damages. Method: In order to identify the major risk factors of accidents by driving condition, 255 recognized traffic accidents by large truck drivers were analyzed in terms of time of the day, road type, and shape of the road. Results: The driving conditions in the results are represented by the following form of combination, "Road Type (Non-expressway or Express) - Shape of Roads (Straight, Curved, Downhill, or Intersection) - Time of Accidents (Day or Night)". In the analysis of injury frequency, Non-expressway-Straight-Day condition was the most frequent one. Meanwhile, Expressway-Curved-Day, Non-expressway-Curved-Night and Non-expressway-Intersection-Night were evaluated as high level in view of injury severity. Also, Expressway-Straight-Night is the driving condition that is the highest in risk among the conditions that have to be managed as grade "High". Non-expressway-Straight-Night, Non-expressway-Downhill-Day, and Non-expressway-Curved-Day are also categorized as grade "High". Conclusion and Application: Safety managers in the fields require basic information on accident prevention that can be easily understood. The research findings will serve as a practical guideline for establishing preventive measures for traffic accidents.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.63-71
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• 2013

The estimation of occupant injury risk at crash accident is one of the most important assessments for the vehicle crashworthiness performance. The design of safety devices such as occupant restraining system also depend on the kinematics of occupant and its injury risk. The real world in-depth accident investigation provides detailed and realistic information of vehicle damage and occupant injury as well as the accident conditions. This paper introduces a statistical analysis of NASS/CDS database and domestic accident data to correlate speed change, vehicle damage extend, and occupant injury at frontal crash. The maximum crush extend shows a linear relationship with the effective impact speed. The injury risks of the occupant with and without restraining were also respectively quantified with the crush extend. This result can be effectively used for the emergent rescue of crash victims with automatic crash notification system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.11-25
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• 2015

The accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, caused by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, resulted in a failure of the power systems that are needed to cool the reactors at the plant. The accident progression in the absence of heat removal systems caused Units 1-3 to undergo fuel melting. Containment pressurization and hydrogen explosions ultimately resulted in the escape of radioactivity from reactor containments into the atmosphere and ocean. Problems in containment venting operation, leakage from primary containment boundary to the reactor building, improper functioning of standby gas treatment system (SGTS), unmitigated hydrogen accumulation in the reactor building were identified as some of the reasons those added-up in the severity of the accident. The Fukushima accident not only initiated worldwide demand for installation of adequate control and mitigation measures to minimize the potential source term to the environment but also advocated assessment of the existing mitigation systems performance behavior under a wide range of postulated accident scenarios. The uncertainty in estimating the released fraction of the radionuclides due to the Fukushima accident also underlined the need for comprehensive understanding of fission product behavior as a function of the thermal hydraulic conditions and the type of gaseous, aqueous, and solid materials available for interaction, e.g., gas components, decontamination paint, aerosols, and water pools. In the light of the Fukushima accident, additional experimental needs identified for hydrogen and fission product issues need to be investigated in an integrated and optimized way. Additionally, as more and more passive safety systems, such as passive autocatalytic recombiners and filtered containment venting systems are being retrofitted in current reactors and also planned for future reactors, identified hydrogen and fission product issues will need to be coupled with the operation of passive safety systems in phenomena oriented and coupled effects experiments. In the present paper, potential hydrogen and fission product issues raised by the Fukushima accident are discussed. The discussion focuses on hydrogen and fission product behavior inside nuclear power plant containments under severe accident conditions. The relevant experimental investigations conducted in the technical scale containment THAI (thermal hydraulics, hydrogen, aerosols, and iodine) test facility (9.2 m high, 3.2 m in diameter, and $60m^3$ volume) are discussed in the light of the Fukushima accident.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.173-184
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• 2008

Development of an accident estimation model based on accident data can be made after accident occurrences. However, the taking of historical accident data is not easy, and there have been differences between real accident data and police-reported accident data. Also, another difficult shortcoming is that historical traffic accident data better consider driver behavior or intersection characteristics. A new method needs to be developed that can predict accident occurrences for traffic safety improvement in black spots. Traffic conflict decision techniques can acquire and analyze data in time and space, requiring less data collection through investigation. However, there are shortcomings: as existing traffic conflict techniques do not operate automatically, the analyst's opinion could easily affect the study results. Also, existing methods do not consider the severity of traffic conflicts. In this study, the authors presented traffic conflict decision criteria which consider conflict severity, including opposing left turn traffic conflict and cross traffic conflict decision criteria. In order to test these criteria, the authors acquired three signalized intersection images (two intersections in Sungnam city and one intersection in Paju) and analyzed the acquired images using image processing techniques based on individual vehicle tracking technology. Within the analyzed images, level 1 conflicts occurred 343 times over three intersections. Some of these traffic conflicts resulted in level 3 conflict situations. Level 3 traffic conflicts occurred 25 times. From the study results, the authors found that traffic conflict decision techniques can be an alternative to evaluate traffic safety in black spots.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.173-180
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• 2016

OBJECTIVES : Fixed roadside objects are a threat to drivers when their vehicles deviate from the road. Therefore, such roadside objects need to be suitably dealt with to decrease accidents. This study determines the factors affecting the severity of accidents because of fixed roadside objects. METHODS : This study analyzed the crash severity impact of fixed roadside objects by using ordered probit regression as the analysis methodology. In this research, data from 896 traffic accidents reported in the last three years were used. These accidents consisted of sole-car accidents, fixed roadside object accidents, and lane-departure accidents on the national highway of Korea. The accident severity was classified as light injury, severe injury, and death. The factors relating to the road and the driver were collected as independent variables. RESULTS : The result of the analysis showed that the variables of the crash severity impact are the collision location (left side), gender of the driver (female), alcohol use, collision facility (roadside trees, traffic signals, telephone poles), and type of road (rural segments). Additionally, the collision location (left side), gender of the driver (female), alcohol use, collision facility (street trees, traffic signals, telephone poles), and type of road (rural segments), in order of influence, were found to be the factors affecting the crash severity in accidents due to fixed roadside objects. CONCLUSIONS : An alternative solution is urgently required to reduce the crash severity in accidents due to fixed roadside objects. Such a solution can consider the appropriate places to install breakaway devices and energy-absorbing systems.

• 한국도로학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.03a
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• pp.77-84
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• 2011