Planning for future transportation systems leans heavily on eliminating factors behind the wheel. Age of the driver involved in a fatal crash indicates a host factor in the epidemiologic chain of events. Specifically nearly half of the statewide increase in dangerous drivers was concentrated in the younger age group which constitutes only 22% of Michigan's licensed driving population. Other variables such as number of miles driven, amount of weekend driving, pattern of driving after drinking, require special studies. Studies reveal that troubled lives lead to troubled driving. Young divorced or widowed females reach the same accident peaks as do 18 and 19 year old males. Other psychological feelings and changes of life style in later years affect driving habits. Follow up lectures were given to students one to 1-1/2 years after their driver education courses. The results were promising. High risk subgroups of drivers should be reached with specially designed programs to help them improve their performance. The natural occurring process of self-awareness, responsibility, and driving maturity can be accelerated in driving performance.
Drawing upon the literature on adaptation vs. fidelity in organizational innovations, this article explores a dimension labeled originality, ranging from ‘origination’ when the organization develops a first-time solution without following a prior example, to ‘adaptation’ when it modifies prior solutions to fit its own situation, to ‘borrowing’ when it finds many well-developed solutions and copies one with little change. Previous studies suggest that to originate a complex innovation will be more costly and risky than to borrow one, and that the innovating process will appear more disorderly. Some empirical data on adoption of urban innovations were examined by a method of ‘quantitative case histories’, in which 2000 brief episodes were coded on type of innovative function (or stage) and on time of occurrence. For innovations of low or medium originality the functions followed an orderly sequence of search, design, appraisal, commitment, and implementation, but for innovations of high originality the functions more nearly coincided, were more prolonged, and had the most overlap, except for one anomaly. A final section speculates on how factors associated with successful innovating – such as prominence of various actors, features of innovating stages, and tactics or strategies – may vary at different originality levels.
As a result of findings from two types of study of young drivers in Michigan, a behavioral longitudinal survey of a probability sample and a surveillance police-based study of statewide fatal accidents, target areas of young driving behavior are indicated for the design and execution of a Spring field trial in Michigan in 1970 to test the feasibility and efficacy of several countermeasures (group discussion, recognition letter, and police program) in a sample of high school seniors to reduce moving violations and accidental injuries. Although the scale of the study is probably too small for definitive results, the detection of demonstrable effects in test groups compared to controls should lead to the design and execution of more extensive trials in a very difficult area of high morbidity and mortarity.
In recent years an increasing amount of literature has discussed the relationship between organizational freedom and individual achievement. Analyzing data from research and development organizations, the authors were puzzled by the fact that having great autonomy increased the performance of engineers but not of Ph.D's. The authors of this article search for clues to the solution of the puzzle.
