• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.163-175
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• 2002

Fatalities from traffic accidents constitute one of the major health issues as well as safety ones in Korea. It has been reported that traffic accident is affected by the combined effects of road. vehicle. and human factors. Over the past few decades, a number of studies have been conducted to find the impact of road geometric factors on traffic safety. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of road geometric factors on traffic safety on Korean expressways. Detailed geometric design data were available from Korea Highway Corporation. Five-year traffic accident data on Honam expressway were collected and analyzed. It was found that following geometric factors influence traffic safety on expressways : radius of curve, curve length, and length of straight section. Furthermore, the existence of I.C. turned out to have a significant impact on traffic safety level. Based on the data analysis several multiple regression forms that relate traffic accident frequencies and geometric factors on expressways are developed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.175-189
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• 2018

Objectives: In this study, we analyze statistics on industrial accidents caused by chemical skin contact and provide skin toxicity hazard information on the related domestic system and circulation volumes. Methods and Results: We analyzed occupational fatalities and skin diseases caused by chemical leaks and contact from 2007 to 2016(10 years) and surveyed data on occupational skin diseases using the 2014 work environment survey data. The NIOSH Skin Notation Profiles for 57 chemical substances, which are provided to prevent occupational skin diseases, were searched and hazard information on skin contact with chemical substances was classified. In order to identify skin toxicity information among domestically distributed and legally regulated substances and to investigate skin-toxic substances, MSDS basic data on 19,740 chemical substances provided on the homepage of Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency were searched. Acute toxicity(dermal) category 1-4 substances totaled 1,020, and the number of chemical substances classified as category 1 and 2 substances were 135 and 137, respectively. In the chemical substances prescribed by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, 173 substances were classified into acute toxicity(dermal) categories 1-4, 58 of which correspond to category 1 or 2. Conclusions: Within the present range of industrial accidents, the proportion of skin diseases due to contact with chemicals is not high. However, there is always a risk of occupational skin diseases due to increasing chemicals and due to the use of new chemicals. It is hoped that this information will be used by workplace safety and health officials and health and safety experts to prevent acute toxity(dermal) due to chemical skin contact.

• Journal of Korean Society of societal Security
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.49-54
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• 2009

High incident of accidents in construction jobsite became a social problem. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 60,000 fatal accidents occur each year in construction workplace worldwide. This number of accidents accounts for about 17 percent of all fatal workplace accidents. Especially, accidents from struck-by and falls comprise of over 60 percent of construction fatalities. This paper introduces a prototype of a received signal strength index (RSSI)-based safety monitoring to mitigate the potential accidents caused by falls and struck-by. Correlation between signal strength and noise index is examined to create the distance profile between a transmitter and a receiver. Throughout the distributed sensor nodes attached on potential hazardous objects, the proposed prototype envisions that construction workers with a tracker-tag can identify and monitor their current working environment in construction workplace, and early warning system can reduce the incidents of fatal accident in construction job site.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.477-484
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• 2023

The number and age of elderly drivers are continuously increasing according to the extension of the human lifespan. Therefore, in transportation, efforts are being made to differentiate and manage elderly drivers by age group. This study aims to identify the factors affecting the crash severity of early and late elderly drivers, compared to middle-aged drivers, and to identify the characteristics between these groups. Crash data that occurred on nationwide roads for the past 5 years (2017-2021) was applied. Unlike previous studies, this study only targeted drivers in their 40s and older, when presbyopia begins: middle-aged driver (40-64), early elderly driver (65-74), and late elderly driver (75+). As a result of logistic regression analysis, a total of 18 variables were found to affect serious injuries including fatalities in early and late elderly drivers. Most of these variables appeared to lead to severity more sensitively in the late elderly group. The results of this study are expected to be useful as basic information for establishing traffic safety policies for elderly drivers in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.126-136
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• 2013

Aircraft accidents these days, following the mega sizing trend of the aircraft, result in enormous losses of human lives apart from those of property, which cannot be replaced by any means. As most recently, in April 20, 2012, a Boeing 737 passenger plane departed Karachi on an augural flight to Islamabad, Pakistan, crashed close to an express highway on final approach, all 121 passengers and 6 crew members were killed. As such a large number of fatalities have been recorded in aircraft accidents while accident investigation results show that more than 95% of aircraft accidents are now survivable. There are three basic stages in surviving the aircraft accident: surviving the crash impact, the evacuation process and the hostile post evacuation environmental elements. These stages require the cabin crew's expeditious and appropriate actions on the basis of systematic and thorough cabin safety training in order to increase occupants' survivability, along with the passengers' preparedness. In this aspect, this paper examines the issues acting as the impediments to the passenger survival in inflight emergency situations, that are the deficiencies with cabin crew safety training, related performances and the shortcomings in passengers' knowledge on inflight safety information, leading to their inappropriate responses to emergency situations. These issues are analyzed and the root causes are identified, suggesting the resolving countermeasures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.10a
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• pp.236-238
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• 2022

According to the current Road Traffic Act, the 2020 amendment bill is currently in effect as a system that designates vehicle types for each lane for the purpose of securing road use efficiency and traffic safety. When comparing the number of traffic accident fatalities per 10,000 vehicles in Germany and Korea, the number of traffic accident deaths in Germany is significantly lower than in Korea. The representative case of the German autobahn, which did not impose a speed limit, suggests that Korea's speeding laws are not the only answer to reducing the accident rate. The designated lane system, which is observed in accordance with the keep right principle of the Autobahn Expressway, plays a major role in reducing traffic accidents. Based on this fact, we propose a traffic enforcement system to crack down on vehicles violating the designated lane system and improve the compliance rate. We develop a designated lane enforcement system that recognizes vehicle types using Yolo5, a deep learning object recognition model, recognizes license plates and lanes using OpenCV, and stores the extracted data in the server to determine whether or not laws are violated.Accordingly, it is expected that there will be an effect of reducing the traffic accident rate through the improvement of driver's awareness and compliance rate.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Clinical Toxicology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.164-171
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• 2009

Purpose: The number of patients who take warfarin is growing and so is the number of complications. Hemorrhage is the major complication, but the clinical characteristics and outcomes have not been determined for Korean patients. Therefore, we tried to evaluate the characteristics of the patients with hemorrhagic complications after taking warfarin as anticoagulation therapy. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of the patients who visited the emergency room with bleeding complications after taking warfarin anticoagulation at the out-patient clinic for 1 year from 1 st January 2008. We compared between two groups (the major hemorrhage group vs. the minor hemorrhage group) according to the clinical criteria, the unstable vital signs that required blood transfusion, transfusion more than 2 units of blood, the need for further laboratory follow-up, the need for interventional treatment and the development of critical complications or death due to bleeding. Results: There were 150 patients who met the criteria and had acute hemorrhagic complications (the major group: 90 patients and the minor group: 60 patients). In the major hemorrhage group, the frequent sites of bleeding were the gastro-intestinal system (40 patients), lung (14 patients) and intracranium (7 patients). At the emergency room, the major group showed a higher initial INR of the activated prothrombin time than did the minor group (p=0.02). The bleeding sites of the fatal cases were the gastro-intestinal system (3 patients), lung (3 patients) and intracranium (3 patients), but the percentage of fatality was the highest for intracranium bleeding. Conclusion: In the major hemorrhage group, gastrointestinal bleeding was the most frequent complication and fatality was the highest for intracranium bleeding. An initially higher INR showed a greater risk of major bleeding, but not more fatalities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.132-146
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• 2017

Appropriate speed limits at a reasonable level in urban roads are highly important factors for efficient and safe movement. Thus, it is greatly necessary to develop the objective models or methodology based on engineering study considering factors such as traffic accident rates, roadside development levels, and roadway geometry characteristics etc. The purpose of this study is to develop the estimate model of appropriate speed limits at each road sections in urban roads using traffic information big data and field specific data and to review the effects of accident decrease. In this study, the estimate method of appropriate speed limits in directional two or more lanes of urban roads is reflecting features of actual variables in a form of adjustment factor on the basis of the maximum statutory speed limits. As a result of investigating and testing influential variables, the main variables to affect the operating speed are the function of road, the existence of median, the width of lane, the number of traffic entrance/exit path and the number of traffic signal or nonsignal at intersection and crosswalk. As a result of testing this model, when the differences are bigger between the real operating speed and the recommended speed limits using model developed in this study, the accident rate generally turns out to be higher. In case of using the model proposed in this study, it means accident rate can be lower. When the result of this study is applied, the speed limits of directional two or more lane roads in Seoul appears about 11km/h lower than the current speed limits. The decrease of average operating speed caused by the decrease of speed limits is 2.8km/h, and the decrease effect of whole accidents according to the decrease of speed is 18% at research road. In case that accident severity is considered, the accident decrease effects are expected to 17~24% in fatalities, 11~17% in seriously injured road user, 6~9% in slightly injured road user, 5~6% in property damage only accidents.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-17
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• 2018

Over the past five years (2010-2014), the total number of traffic accidents has decreased from 226,878 to 223,552 with decrease of 0.37 percent each year. The death toll has also decreased from 5,505 to 4,762. However, the number of rental car accidents and fatalities has been steadily increased. Despite of its growth, no previous study has been conducted on rental car accident severity. This study analyzed data of 18,050 rental car accidents in South Korea collected from 2010 to 2014 and then processed in order to identify which factors could affect the accident severity. Seventeen factors related to rental car accident severity were grouped into four categories: driver, vehicle, roadways and environment. As a result of the ordered probit model analysis, fourteen variables excluding age, intersection, and day of week were found to affect the severity of rental car accidents. The results of the study summarized as follows. First of all, violation of traffic regulations such as speeding increase the severity of rental car accidents. Secondly, rental accident severity is higher at curved sections of complicated roadway, which the driver's field of view is impaired. The results of this study can be used to reduce the severity of rental car accidents in transportation safety.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2003

The job of long distance driving is likely to be fatiguing and requires long period alertness and attention, which make considerable demands of the driver. Driving fatigue contributes to driver related with accidents and fatalities. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the number of hours of driving and driving fatigue using heart rate variability(HRV) signal. With a more traditional measure of overall variability (standard deviation, mean, spectral values of heart rate). Nonlinear characteristics of HRV signal were analyzed using Approximate Entropy (ApEn) and Poincare plot. Five subjects drive the four passenger vehicle twice. All experiment number was 40. The test route was about 300Km continuous long highway circuit and driving time was about 3 hours. During the driving, measures of electrocardiogram(ECG) were performed at intervals of 30min. HRV signal, derived from the ECG, was analyzed using time, frequency domain parameters and nonlinear characteristic. The significance of differences on the response to driving fatigue was determined by Student's t-test. Differences were considered significant when a p value < 0.05 was observed. In the results, mean heart rate(HRmean) decreased consistently with driving time, standard deviation of RR intervals(SDRR), standard deviation of the successive difference of the RR intervals(SDSD) increased until 90min. Hereafter, they were almost unchanging until the end of the test. Normalized low frequency component $(LF_{norm})$, ratio of low to high frequency component (LF/HF) increased. We used the Approximate Entropy(ApEn), Poincare plot method to describe the nonlinear characteristics of HRV signal. Nonlinear characteristics of HRV signals decreased with driving time. Statistical significant is appeared after 60 min in all parameters.