Technical Sessions

Mr. Al Gullon, ACEs, Canada

ABSTRACT NOTE: this 'abstract' is a synopsis of the subjects treated in the full paper and will be cut back to the 500 word maximum if this proposal is accepted for presentation in Budapest. Explanatory comments for the reviewers are in [ ] and will not be in the final abstract.

Those who do not remember (ed: learn from?) the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

As the US-triggered global recession became ever deeper, we have seen safety officials in many countries announcing, nearly a full year before the data normally becomes publicly available, large decreases in traffic fatalities while crediting their continuing safety efforts with this welcome development. [The latest was China on July 29 well after the original abstract deadline.] The author's first three papers, of eight (three with FISITA), using epidemiological data from 17 countries representing every inhabited continent, have shown that the annual deviations of the fatality rate from the trendline correspond strongly with the ups and downs of the 'business cycle'. When the half-century trendlines for the fatality rate (per VKmT) of the US, Great Britain and Canada are plotted together it can be seen that the fatality rate drop in the four preceding recessions is roughly proportional to the drop in GDP for all three countries. Psychologically [that is the normal working of the human mind as opposed to the aberrant psychology with which the profession is usually concerned] this correlation is very credibly explained by 8 traffic police officers, from seven countries on two continents, who all identified the fundamental cause of traffic accidents, alcohol aside, as mental distraction (now called AMPS - Absent Minded Professor Syndrome). [The pleasant daydreams during an economic boom are quite suddenly replaced by a more defensive mindset in the following recession. (see www.alsaces.ca for the author's early papers on that subject)] Support for those eight officers is provided by the author's discovery of idioms supporting AMPS as a genomic human problem in many languages all around the globe, including Chinese and Arabic. Further examination of that tri-country graph reveals that the large decrease in all three countries from 1970 to the late '80's (and the 'flat-lining' thereafter), as well as the inter-country differences, is almost completely explained by the history of passive safety, particularly seat belt installation and usage, in the three countries. This suggests strongly that the conventional 'active safety' programs, e.g. general speed limits applied to entire road networks, have been almost entirely ineffective. The paper then encourages public officials to heed Santayana's dictum and use ITS (e.g. VMS with strobe lights) to counteract AMPS in the more dangerous traffic situations and provides examples for such collision 'black spots' as motorway junctions and suburban intersections.

The author affirms that the paper is original and has not been published or presented elsewhere.

This abstract is supplemented by a PDF, which can be viewed here.

Session: Intelligent Transportation Systems