Pediatrics in the Parking Lot-taking Child Passenger Safety to the Community

Background: Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) remain the leading cause of death for Kentucky children above age 1. The Nest has four separate non-profit programs that provide respite child care, legal/psychological support services to survivors of intimate partner violence, parenting classes, and crisis assistance to families (toiletries/cleaning-supplies/papergoods/diapers/formula/food/rental-assistance since COVID, serving more than 400 clients per month). Community need for car seats was previously demonstrated by the 57 used seats they distributed in a year. Methods: Standard national Child Passenger Safety (CPS) checkup forms were utilized, with an Excel data base of seats provided/notes of special circumstances/problems with seats/cars. Forms from October 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021 were reviewed for quality improvement at least monthly, with immediate adjustments as necessary. All education and seat installation occurred outdoors during fall months and on all but the coldest winter days. Staff and families were masked, items used were sanitized and meticulous hand washing was done between families due to COVID. New convertible seats from grants were supplemented with individually- purchased harnessed booster seats to serve older children and with current (never-in- crash, not -recalled) donated infant seats. CPS services were conducted in 4 languages (English, French, Spanish and Arabic) with fluent staff or consenting family members as translators, and were offered both by appointment/previous consultation/referral from Family Assistance and as walk-ins requesting help or were observed to have car-seat/booster-sized children. Results: A small program that distributed seats as commodities without instruction or assessment of child/car was revised into a formal CPS fitting station, addressing difficult cars, large families, grandparents raising grandchildren, and resettled international refugees. Approximately 90% of families had annual family incomes of < $20,000/year, many below $10,000. Almost every consult for one child revealed multiple children in need of car seat education or new seats. More than 150 seats were checked in nine months. Types of misuse (in >90%) seen include: no seat, child too loose in seat, seat too loose in car, use of infant seats facing forward for too-big toddlers, premature use of no-back boosters (NBB) for small young children when family has no money for harnessed seats or at the mis-direction of a medical professional. Families that live in high crime areas with car theft are bringing in car seats at night so need lighter weight ones, as do grandparents. Conclusion: Taking CPS to the parking lot of an established non-profit has permitted us to reach more families with great need in a place they trust. Types of misuse have provided a real-world window into the potential optimal timing/messages of CPS within pediatric anticipatory guidance, and families have shown how our anticipatory CPS guidance may need to be adapted to work in the environment that people actually live in.

The Impact of Airport Physical Environment on Perceived Safety and Domestic Travel Intention of Chinese Passengers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediating Role of Passenger Satisfaction

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has become an important new research topic, has exerted a huge impact on airports and the antecedents of passengers’ travel decisions following its outbreak. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the influences of four attributes of airport physical environment (facility functionality, facility aesthetics, layout accessibility, and cleanliness) on passengers’ perceived safety, satisfaction, and travel intention, as well as the mediating role of passenger satisfaction. We built a structural equation model to assume the relationship between these variables. A total of 398 domestic travelers were asked to fill out a survey in order to reveal their perceptions of airport physical environment, perceived safety, satisfaction, and travel intention. The results indicate that passengers with positive perceptions of the facility functionality, layout accessibility, and cleanliness of airports had a higher degree of satisfaction and might be more willing to engage in more air travel in the future. In particular, a clean airport environment significantly improved passengers’ perceived safety. Moreover, facility functionality, layout accessibility, cleanliness, and perceived safety all had an effect on travel intention through the mediating role of satisfaction. Overall, these findings offer suggestions for airport authorities aiming to revive demand for air travel. Discussions about airport physical environment improvements along with limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

Spatial Distribution of Exhalation Droplets in the Bus in Different Seasons

In closed buses, the spread of droplets with viruses/bacteria may cause the spread of respiratory infectious diseases. Discrete phase modeling is used to simulate the diffusion characteristics and concentration distribution of droplets at different temperatures and different exhalation positions by ANSYS FLUENT software. The integral concentration of droplets at different locations can be quantified, which leads to identification of low-risk areas and high-risk areas in the bus. Results show that a higher outdoor temperature leads to lower droplets’ diffusion speed and longer time until the droplets reach the driver. In addition, based on the integral concentration of droplets at the seats, regardless of whether a passenger exhales droplets in the front row of the bus, the position of the rear door or the last row of the bus, the seats in the last row of the bus away from the door belong to the low-risk area. In contrast, the seats near the door and the middle seat in the bus are higher risk areas. Consequently, this study proposed sitting on a seat in the low-risk area as a means to reduce the risk of passengers. Moreover, safety protection facilities around the driver should be modified to improve the isolation of the upper area of the driver’s location, so as to effectively prevent the droplet diffusion towards the driver, thereby effectively reducing the driver’s risk of infection.

Enhancing mass transit passenger safety during a pandemic via in-vehicle time minimization

The risk of infection in a pandemic increases with duration of close contact with an infected person. Since the application of social distancing in public transit vehicles is challenging, minimization of in-vehicle time can help to protect passengers from getting infected. Skip-stop operation is a viable strategy to reduce in-vehicle time as opposed to the conventional all-stop operation, and therefore can provide safer mobility for passengers. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming model is formulated to minimize the in-vehicle time of passengers while operating an A/B stopping pattern (one of the most popular skip-stop strategies in the literature and in practice). Since the number of direct trips is necessarily decreased when using such a skip-stop operation, this paper quantifies the tradeoff between the in-vehicle time of passengers as a pandemic-based safety measure and the number of direct trips as a measure of passenger satisfaction. In order to efficiently solve problems with a large number of transit stops, a multi-start genetic algorithm is developed. Rigorous numerical experiments indicate that the proposed approach can reduce in-vehicle time by up to 34%. Furthermore, Pareto optimal solutions are obtained to exhibit the tradeoff between in-vehicle time savings and percentage of direct trips.

Effects of HVAC Settings And Windows Open Or Close On The SARS-COV-2 Virus Transmission Inside A Mass Transit System Bus

With the current outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, public transportation is a key area which must be investigated to ensure both passenger safety and efficiency of passenger transport to best serve the community and reduce environmental footprint. In this paper, the transport of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through human respiratory particles is examined using transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to determine the impacts different ventilation configurations on the probability of viral exposure. The motion of the viral particles was simulated first by solving for the flow field inside the bus using a proprietary Navier-Stokes finite-volume solver, RavenCFD by Corvid Technologies, and then using Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) post processing techniques. The LPT methods used allowed for the injection of respiratory particles, according to distributions found in literature, which included sneezing, coughing, and speaking. To fully investigate the problem space the moving bus was modeled with the windows in various states of closure and with various HVAC configurations. In all scenarios, a volumetric Viral Mean Exposure Time (VMET), which considers the viral load calculations, was used to quantify the various exposure risk of all passengers on the bus. It was found that the most efficient ventilation system on a public transport bus was to keep the windows closed and HVAC of main cabin at maximum to minimize the viral exposure within the bus. © 2021 by ASME.

Characteristics of the Wind and Wave Climate along the European Seas Focusing on the Main Maritime Routes

European seas have a strong economic role both in terms of transport and tourism. Providing more knowledge, regarding the mean and extreme values of the wind and sea state conditions in the areas characterized by high maritime traffic, helps to improve navigational safety. From this perspective, six zones with high maritime traffic are studied. ERA5 database, a state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset provided by ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), is used to assess the average values and the percentiles for the wind speed and the main wave parameters in the target areas considering the period 2001–2020. The main European routes and the extreme conditions along them as well as the areas characterized by high values of wind speed and high waves were also identified. A more comprehensive picture of the expected dynamics of the environmental matrix along the most significant shipping routes is useful because in this way the most dangerous areas could be avoided by ships for the safety of passengers and transported goods.

Considerations Regarding the Climate Change Induced Hazards on Airports in Romania – A Case Study of Timişoara International Airport

Climate change is regarded as a global scale process in which an increase of magnitude and intensity of severe weather events is observed, thus affecting both air travel as well as airport infrastructure. Although the COVID-19 crisis has a significant negative impact on air travel and thus on the further development of airport infrastructure, the demand for air travel will continue to rise as the crisis nears the end. The aim of this paper is to analyse and highlight the climate change associated hazards for the airport infrastructure as well as for the safety of passengers and goods in the Western part of Romania, mainly Traian Vuia International Airport from Timişoara. Throughout this analysis, aviation related severe weather events, such as thunderstorms, hail events, fog, icing, squalls, low level wind shear, snow falls and heavy precipitation, which affect airport infrastructure and thus air travel, are highlighted. By analysing meteorological parameters from the time scale 1980-2010 together with climate change scenarios, and thus developing weather hazard maps, a better perspective of area-related hazards and therefore customized mitigation measures and adaptation strategies are to be developed. The implementation of modern forecasting equipment such as dual polarization Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) is thus necessary in order to prevent loss of human lives, to reduce financial losses and to protect the airport infrastructure and the aeronautical navigation and communication facilities. Long term changes in meteorological parameters include an increase in air temperature, an increase in speed for both horizontal and vertical windshear during severe weather events, an increasing number of air mass thunderstorms and an increase of situations with limited visibility especially during the late autumn and early spring time.

So much nuance: A qualitative analysis of parental perspectives on child passenger safety.

OBJECTIVE: To explore barriers and facilitators to optimal child restraint system (CRS) use for diverse parents of newborn infants and to obtain input from parents on the use of technology-assisted remote car seat checks as tools for promoting optimal CRS use. METHODS: Parents were recruited using purposive sampling. Interviews were conducted with English- or Spanish-speaking parents with a full term newborn and regular access to a car. Interviews were conducted by phone, and recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was reached. Data were organized for analysis using Atlas.ti, and codes grouped by theme using constant comparison. RESULTS: 30 parents were enrolled. Barriers and facilitators to optimal CRS use were classified into three themes, as were thoughts on the pros and cons regarding remote car seat checks. Themes on barriers and facilitators included motor vehicle and CRS features (such as age and size of the motor vehicle and presence of the Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children LATCH system), resources (availability, accessibility, and accuracy of resources), and parental factors (parental emotions and characteristics). Themes related to pros and cons of remote car seat checks included the ability (and challenge) of remote car seat checks to identify and correct errors, the potential use of remote car seat checks in certain situations (such as CRS transitions and periods of growth), and convenience of remote car seat checks (including increased availability and ease of access). Subthemes with further detail were arranged within each theme identified. CONCLUSION: From a parent perspective, there are several identified barriers and facilitators of optimal CRS use. Although car seat checks were identified as a resource, in-person accessibility was an issue, and there were mixed opinions on technology-assisted remote car seat checks. These results provide a foundation for additional study on targeted interventions, including remote interventions for which there is an increased need due to the COVID-19 pandemic.