Injury is recognized as a major public health issue worldwide. In most countries, injury is the leading cause of death and disability for children and young adults age 1 to 39 years. Each year in the United States, injury claims about 170,000 lives and results in over 30 million emergency room visits and 2.5 million hospitalizations. Injury is medically defined as organ/tissue damages inflicted upon oneself or by an external agent either accidentally or deliberately. Injury encompasses the undesirable consequences of a wide array of events, such as motor vehicle crashes, poisoning, burns, falls, and drowning, medical error, adverse effects of drugs, suicide and homicide. The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable growth in injury research, both in scope and in depth. To address the tremendous health burden of injury morbidity and mortality at the global level, the World Health Organization in 2000 created the Department of Injury and Violence Prevention, which has produced several influential reports on violence, traffic injury, and childhood injury. The biennial World Conference on Injury Control and Safety Promotion attracts a large international audience and has been successfully convened nine times in different countries. In the United States, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control became an independent program of the federal Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in 1997. Since then, each state health department has created an office in charge of injury prevention activities and over a dozen universities have established injury control research centers. This volume will fill an important gap in the scientific literature by providing a comprehensive and up-to-date reference resource to researchers, practitioners, and students working on different aspects of the injury problem and in different practice settings and academic fields.

This book discusses several methodological problems in traffic psychology which are not currently recognized as such. Summarizing and analyzing the available research, it is found that there are a number of commonly made assumptions about the validity of methods that have little backing, and that many basic problems have not been researched at all. Suggestions are made as to further studies that should be made to address some of these problems. The book is primarily intended for traffic/transport researchers, but should also be useful for specialized education at a higher level (doctoral students and transportation specialists) as well as officials who require a good grasp of methodology to be able to evaluate research.

There are approximately 4,000 fatalities in crashes involving trucks and buses in the United States each year. Though estimates are wide-ranging, possibly 10 to 20 percent of these crashes might have involved fatigued drivers. The stresses associated with their particular jobs (irregular schedules, etc.) and the lifestyle that many truck and bus drivers lead, puts them at substantial risk for insufficient sleep and for developing short- and long-term health problems. Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue, Long-Term Health and Highway Safety assesses the state of knowledge about the relationship of such factors as hours of driving, hours on duty, and periods of rest to the fatigue experienced by truck and bus drivers while driving and the implications for the safe operation of their vehicles. This report evaluates the relationship of these factors to drivers' health over the longer term, and identifies improvements in data and research methods that can lead to better understanding in both areas.