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Background: Despite the considerable health benefits of walking on human health, pedestrian traffic accidents seriously threaten people's safety. Specifically, the risky behaviors of pedestrians may lead to dangerous situations while crossing the road. Few studies have examined the relationship between high-risk pedestrian behaviors and some of their characteristics. The present study aimed to investigate the risky behaviors of pedestrians and their relationship to some demographic variables while crossing the street. Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted among 700 pedestrians over 18 years old. Data were collected using the Pedestrian Violations Questionnaire (PVQ). Convenience sampling was done in areas with different socioeconomic levels. The data were analyzed by the SPSS version 16 using an independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, chi-square, and Fisher exact tests at a significance level of 0.05. Results: The results indicated a significant relationship between risky pedestrian behaviors and demographic variables, including age, marital status, and education. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the risky behaviors of females and males and their involvement in accidents. Conclusion: Pedestrian risky behaviors seem to be strongly correlated with age. Education can also be a predictor of risky behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification and control of features influencing traffic crashes have become a concern in safety and human factor engineering. The decision tree algorithm can play an effective role in the identification of these features by discovering hidden patterns in traffic crash data. The present study was conducted to identify the most important features influencing the prediction of the types of crashes on a freeway in Iran using the decision tree algorithm. Reports were collected on 2039 traffic crashes on the freeway during 2015–2017. Each crash report form included 35 features, each of which had more sub-features. To optimize the features, the participle swarm optimization (PSO) approach was adopted. The remaining features from the optimization process were analyzed based on the decision tree algorithm in MATLAB. Applying PSO, 13 features were introduced to the decision tree algorithm. Based on the calculations of the algorithm, a decision tree model was constructed. The model demonstrated that seven features generated the highest separation for determining crash types on the freeway, including the complete cause of the crash, road surface conditions, the geometry of the crash location, weather conditions, time of the crash, the human component, and helmet/safety belt. The overall prediction accuracy of the model was found to be 72.21%. The prediction accuracy of the model was also separately calculated for different types of crashes. The prediction accuracy results were 93.62%, 64.20%, and 65.47% for fatal, injury, and damage crashes, respectively. This study can be regarded as the intersection of crash data, data mining, safety sciences. The results can be used to develop strategies and control/supervision plans in order to reduce crash and injury rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objective: Road accidents are among the major problems of transportation in Iran. There are four factors involved in road accidents, including the human, road, vehicle, and environment. Among these, human (driver) error has an important role in 70-90% of the accidents. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify and examine driver's errors using the Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis Method (CREAM). Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out to examine a specific scenario involving driving tasks. First, driving tasks for the scenario were analyzed using the Hierarchical Task Analysis. Then, using the primary and broad CREAM techniques, possible driver controls and cognitive errors were determined for the tasks. Results: Based on the obtained results of the scenario using the primary CREAM technique, nine diver tasks were determined, including wearing a seat-belt, controlling the indicators, acceleration changing, direction changing, adjusting the distance, stopping the car, turning off the car, unbuckling the seat belt, and the light type of tactical control. Then, using the broad CREAM technique, the error levels of execution, observation, and interpretation were reported as 71.87%, 18.75%, and 9.38%, respectively. Conclusion: In the present study, four items were identified regarding the performance-reducing conditions using the primary CREAM technique. In this regard, the factor of working conditions with one case and performing two or more tasks simultaneously with three cases were introduced as the most effective performance-reducing factors that can decrease the risk of driver's errors through their reduction. Moreover, 32 driver's errors were identified according to the broad CREAM technique. Based on the results, the most common cognitive errors included execution and observation errors. With regard to the proposed controls, the risk of human errors can be reduced for the analyzed subtasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental fatigue (MF) is considered as a contributor factor in incident, even catastrophic one. Electroencephalography measurement has been the most acceptable method to assess MF by neurologists. However, this method could be hardly feasible in real work setting. Flicker fusion device, by contrast, is more usable at work setting. The purpose of this study was to compare the Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency (CFFF) with Electroencephalograph (EEG) alpha band changes (as indicators of mental fatigue). The study took place in Zanjan (2015) and the participants included 35 volunteer students that passed a three-step experiment protocol: 1) Measuring MF via CFFF and EEGα, 2) Involving the participants with MF-induced tasks, and 3) Re-measuring MF via the same methods. The results showed that differences of MF assessment by EEG (P= 0.001), and CFFF (P= 0.004) were significant. However, the correlation between them was weak (-0.069) and not significant (P= 0.688). The findings of this study confirmed that the flicker fusion apparatus could measure MF as a before-after test. However, the results of CFFF were not correspondence with the results EEGα. Therefore, more studies need to get conclusion about how the results of these instruments may related to each other. Considering other regions or waves of the brain might be promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Safety culture is a term, which is used repeatedly in the assessment of safety status of companies. The aim of the present study was to investigate the parameters and factors influencing organizational safety culture in the Iranian thermal power plants industry. Methods: The triangulation approach was used for data generation in this grounded theory study. Nineteen participants from a variety of work groups at three thermal power plants of Iran (Shazand, Shahid rajaei Ghazvin, and ramin Ahwaz) took part in focus group interviews, individual interviews, field observations, and focus group discussions. Thematic analysis was conducted to emerge and identify contributing factors. Results: The thematic analysis identified 9 sets of parameters for achieving safety culture as follows: (1) training, briefing and competency, (2) vision, leadership and commitment, (3) laws, rules and work procedures, (4) safety and crisis management, (5) individual agents, (6) Management style and organizational communication, (7) participation and commitment of personnel, supervisors and middle managements, (8) non-organizational agents, and (9) to make available foundations and source managements. Conclusions: The results indicated that an improvement in each parameter is necessary to achieve top safety culture. Moreover, proportionate to the conditions of each company, measures should be taken for the imporovement of actions of safety status and to accomplish pre-determined targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowing about organisational safety culture in public transportation system can provide an appropriate guide to establish effective safety measures and interventions to improve safety at work. The aim of this study was investigation of association between safety culture dimensions (leadership styles and company values, usage of crashes information and prevention programmes, management commitment and safety policy, participation and control) with involved self-reported crashes. The associations were considered through Spearman correlation, Pearson chi-square test and logistic regression. The results showed an association among self-reported crashes (occurrence or non-occurrence) and factors including leadership styles and company values; management commitment and safety policy; and control. Moreover, it was found a negative correlation and an odds ratio less than one between control and self-reported crashes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is believed that improved safety culture/climate is a fundamental element to accident prevention. Therefore, development a scale to assess safety climate is a step towards accident control. The purpose of this study was to construct a Persian safety climate questionnaire. Methods: The study took place in Tehran and Esfahan oil refineries in Iran in 2010. An initial questionnaire was formed from two previous studies. This tool was translated to Persian based on back translation. The 61-item questionnaire was tested on operational staffs (N=324). Principle component analysis and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization was used to extract factors, in statistical software package SPSS 11.0. Results: The factors were obtained as Management Commitment to Safety and personnel collaboration 23 variables, 17.33 % of the variance, Safety communication five items, 6.97% of the variance, Supportive environment five items, 6.245% of the variance, Work Environment six items, 5.590% of the variance, Formal Training four items, 4.581% of the variance, Priority of Safety five items, 4.177% of the variance, Personal Priorities and Need for Safety three items, 3.333% of the variance. Conclusions: Achievement of a valid and reliable safety climate tool may bring enormous benefits to the refineries. However, a reliable and valid tool to measure safety climate could be useful in other refineries. Moreover, the generic nature of the safety climate scale may grant its use for other workplaces [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & objective: High workload may lead to increase human errors, compromise quality and safety of care, and reduce the nurses' quality of working life. The aim of this study is to determine the task-induced workload in nursing. Methods: This is a descriptive analytical study. All of 214 nurses of one of the educational hospital took part in. After obtaining informed consent from participants, data were collected based on NASA-TLX questionnaire and the desired level assumed less than 50%. Analysis of data was performed by descriptive statistics and Anova in SPSS software (version 11. 0) at significant level of 0.05. Results: The results showed that perceived mental pressure for nurses is more than other NASA-TLX subscales (P< .001). Also, the mean perceived workload was more than 50%. However, mean workload score of NASA-TLX showed significant correlation with age (P< .001), work experience (P< .001), shift work (P< .02), and department (P< .001). Conclusion: The results show that effective programs will be required to reduce the work load, and to enhance nurses' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]