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Background: Many countries instituted lockdown rules as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, however, the effects of COVID-19 on transportation safety vary widely across countries and regions. In several situations, it has been shown that although the COVID-19 closure has decreased average traffic flow, it has also led to an increase in speeding, which will indeed increase the severity of crashes and the number of fatalities and serious injuries. Methods: At the local level, Generalized linear Mixed (GLM) modelling is used to look at how often road crashes changed in the Adelaide metropolitan area before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Geographically Weighted Generalized Linear Model (GWGLM) is also used to explore how the association between the number of crashes and the factors that explain them varies across census blocks. Using both no-spatial and spatial models, the effects of urban structure elements like land use mix, road network design, distance to CBD, and proximity to public transit on the frequency of crashes at the local level were studied. Results: This research showed that lockdown orders led to a mild reduction (approximately 7%) in crash frequency. However, this decrease, which has occurred mostly during the first three months of the lockdown, has not systematically alleviated traffic safety risks in the Greater Adelaide Metropolitan Area. Crash hotspots shifted from areas adjacent to workplaces and education centres to green spaces and city fringes, while crash incidence periods switched from weekdays to weekends and winter to summer. Implications: The outcomes of this research provided insights into the impact of shifting driving behaviour on safety during disorderly catastrophes such as COVID-19.

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In three laboratory experiments, we examine the impact of personally relevant failures (PeRFs) on users' perceptions of a collaborative robot. PeR is determined by how much a specific issue applies to a particular person, i.e., it affects one's own goals and values. We hypothesized that PeRFs would reduce trust in the robot and the robot's Likeability and Willingness to Use (LWtU) more than failures that are not personal to participants. To achieve PeR in human-robot interaction, we utilized three different manipulation mechanisms: (A) damage to property, (B) financial loss, and (C) first-person versus third-person failure scenarios. In total, 132 participants engaged with a robot in person during a collaborative task of laundry sorting. All three experiments took place in the same experimental environment, carefully designed to simulate a realistic laundry sorting scenario. Results indicate that the impact of PeRFs on perceptions of the robot varied across the studies. In experiments A and B, the encounters with PeRFs reduced trust significantly relative to a no failure session. But not entirely for LWtU. In experiment C, the PeR manipulation had no impact. The work highlights challenges and adjustments needed for studying robotic failures in laboratory settings. We show that PeR manipulations affect how users perceive a failing robot. The results bring about new questions regarding failure types and their perceived severity on users' perception of the robot. Putting PeR aside, we observed differences in the way users perceive interaction failures compared (experiment C) to how they perceive technical ones (A and B).

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Despite the numerous breakthroughs in crash analytics, there remains a lack of consensus among safety practitioners as to the optimal method for locating high crash locations. Two critical components in the traffic safety analysis process not agreed upon are 1) how the crash distance to a target location is included in the analysis and 2) how crashes are weighted based on crash-related characteristics. For example, the commonly used buffering technique to determine which crashes are associated with a specific target road segment does not associate crashes that are closer to a target road segment with any additional weight, even though it is likely to be more greatly associated with the characteristics of the target location. Additionally, the commonly used equivalent property damage only (EPDO) crash weight method has been found to weigh fatal crashes significantly more than serious injury crashes, even if the difference between the two outcomes was a single factor. This study proposes more robust crash weighting techniques for use in high-risk location identification using an application of a novel horizontal curve dataset. Specifically, a heteroscedastic censored regression approach was used to investigate the impact of different crash proximity weighting techniques and crash severity weighting methods on model outcomes. The results demonstrate that the use of a linear distance weighting factor used in conjunction with the buffering technique as well as a less precise EPDO weighting factor method results in more robust safety analysis outcomes. The improved results have the potential to improve hot spot identification and resource allocation at both the federal and regional levels by employing models that more accurately link specific crash segments with contributing crash characteristics.

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Previous research showed that children are influenced not only by intentions and outcomes but also by transgressor negligence in their moral judgments. The current study investigated the role of transgressor and victim negligence on children's moral judgments. Children's false-belief theory of mind understanding (FBU ToM) was examined as a possible factor that might shape moral judgments in contexts involving negligence. Children (N = 117, Mage = 5.41 years, range = 3-8) were presented with two stories involving property damage and physical harm where negligence was manipulated and with a series of questions assessing moral judgments regarding act acceptability of the transgressor and victim, punishment, and assessments of alternative actions. FBU ToM was measured with a false-content task. Children with higher FBU ToM were more likely to consider both transgressor and victim negligence in their moral judgments across different transgressions. The findings have implications for how social cognitive abilities interact with transgressor and victim negligence in moral decisions.

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Disasters triggered by natural hazards resulted in an accumulative economic loss of approximately USD 7 trillion and killed some eight million people worldwide in the twentieth century. Given the escalating threat posed by natural hazards to communities, scholars and practitioners are emphasising the importance of mitigation as a strategy to enhance community resilience. Little is known, though, about the extent to which governments' disaster risk reduction efforts have augmented community resilience outcomes. This paper bridges the gap by examining the effects of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) in the United States, which was designed to improve disaster resilience at the community level. The study analysed natural hazard loss data pertaining to those US counties that received HMGP funds following the pronouncement of presidentially-declared disasters between 2010 and 2015. The findings suggest that the counties that obtained HMGP funds are likely to experience less property damage owing to future natural hazards.

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This descriptive record-based study included 75 patients who had engaged in domestic property damaging (DPD) and needed assessment by an urban emergency psychiatric service team in The Netherlands. The DPD patients were compared to 1145 other patients referred because of aggression, suicidality or other reasons. DPD patients were more often diagnosed with a psychotic disorder or a manic episode, had more often a migration background, were less often diagnosed with depression, and had lower GAF scores. There were no differences with respect to personality disorders or substance use. DPD patients were two to six times more likely to be (mostly involuntarily) admitted to a psychiatric department (64%), than the other patient groups (aggression 45%, suicidality 21%, other referral reasons 37%). The findings indicate that DPD patients represent an exclusive group who possibly have more intercultural and communication disadvantages due to less cultural acceptance or lack of knowledge about mental healthcare in the Netherlands.

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Winter storms pose numerous hazards to the Northeast United States, including rain, snow, strong wind, and flooding. These hazards can cause millions of dollars in damages from one storm alone. This study investigates meteorological intensity and impacts of winter storms from 2001 to 2014 on coastal counties in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York and underscores the consequences of winter storms. The study selected 70 winter storms on the basis of station observations of surface wind strength, heavy precipitation, high storm tide, and snow extremes. Storm rankings differed between measures, suggesting that intensity is not easily defined with a single metric. Several storms fell into two or more categories (multiple-category storms). Following storm selection, property damages were examined to determine which types lead to high losses. The analysis of hazards (or events) and associated damages using the Storm Events Database of the National Centers for Environmental Information indicates that multiple-category storms were responsible for a greater portion of the damage. Flooding was responsible for the highest losses, but no discernible connection exists between the number of storms that afflict a county and the damage it faces. These results imply that losses may rely more on the incidence of specific hazards, infrastructure types, and property values, which vary throughout the region.

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The present descriptive study analyzes stalking in a sample of 278 Spanish court cases involving partner violence and contrasts the benefits of the new bill article 172ter, which criminalizes stalking, compared with the Organic Law 1/2004 on partner violence. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of the total sample included stalking behaviors, which manifested in intimidatory (60%) and controlling (45%) unwanted verbal communications (62%) and physical approaches (42%) that ended violently in a third of the cases (35%). Cases involving violent stalking, non-violent stalking, and physical violence without stalking were compared. A closer look at violent stalking cases uncovered that intimacy-seeking stalking behavior was concurrent with face-to-face aggression with a sharp object, whereas pursuit/control and invasive behavior were associated with property invasion and damage. Data not only support the contention that stalking should be criminalized regardless of the type of stalking behavior but also indicate that differences in the behavior might warrant different management interventions.

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BACKGROUND: This study aimed to assess psychological distress (PD) in earthquake-stricken communities with regard to the extent of property damage for 3 years following the 2004 Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake in Japan. METHODS: Subjects were participants of health check examinations in a community near the epicentre, and included 7097 residents (≥18 years) in 2005, 6586 in 2006 and 6698 in 2007. Interviews assessed PD symptoms and lifestyles. The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) was used, with scores ≥20 considered as PD. The 137 subdistricts were divided into quartiles according to the proportion of half-completely destroyed houses at cut-offs of 18.9, 30.5 and 66.7%. RESULTS: The PD prevalence was 17.0% in 2005, 13.2% in 2006 and 11.8% in 2007. In 2005, the more and most heavily damaged groups had significantly higher PD prevalence (OR = 1.5 and 1.4, respectively) than that of the least damaged group with a dose-dependent relationship (P = 0.0005). This association was weaker in 2006 (P = 0.0413) and in 2007 (P = 0.1816). CONCLUSION: Psychological distress prevalence was high in highly damaged areas, and the prevalence difference between areas with high versus low damage decreases with time. Extensive mental health care in communities with substantial damage should be expected to last 2 years after an earthquake.

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People often judge it unacceptable to directly harm a person, even when this is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome, such as saving five other lives. We demonstrate that similar judgments arise when people consider damage to owned objects. In two experiments, participants considered dilemmas where saving five inanimate objects required destroying one. Participants judged this unacceptable when it required violating another's ownership rights, but not otherwise. They also judged that sacrificing another's object was less acceptable as a means than as a side-effect; judgments did not depend on whether property damage involved personal force. These findings inform theories of moral decision-making. They show that utilitarian judgment can be decreased without physical harm to persons, and without personal force. The findings also show that the distinction between means and side-effects influences the acceptability of damaging objects, and that ownership impacts utilitarian moral judgment.

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