Cause Of Motor Vehicle Accidents Research Articles

Convergent validity of video-based observer rating of drowsiness, against subjective, behavioral, and physiological measures.

Driver drowsiness is a widely recognized cause of motor vehicle accidents. Therefore, a reduction in drowsy driving crashes is required. Many studies evaluating the crash risk of drowsy driving and developing drowsiness detection systems, have used observer rating of drowsiness (ORD) as a reference standard (i.e. ground truth) of drowsiness. ORD is a method of human raters evaluating the levels of driver drowsiness, by visually observing a driver. Despite the widespread use of ORD, concerns remain regarding its convergent validity, which is supported by the relationship between ORD and other drowsiness measures. The objective of the present study was to validate video-based ORD, by examining correlations between ORD levels and other drowsiness measures. Seventeen participants performed eight sessions of a simulated driving task, verbally responding to Karolinska sleepiness scale (KSS), while infra-red face video, lateral position of the participant's car, eye closure, electrooculography (EOG), and electroencephalography (EEG) were recorded. Three experienced raters evaluated the ORD levels by observing facial videos. The results showed significant positive correlations between the ORD levels and all other drowsiness measures (i.e., KSS, standard deviation of the lateral position of the car, percentage of time occupied by slow eye movement calculated from EOG, EEG alpha power, and EEG theta power). The results support the convergent validity of video-based ORD as a measure of driver drowsiness. This suggests that ORD might be suitable as a ground truth for drowsiness.

Technology for Alcoholic Detection and Accident Prevention

According to risk assessments of getting into an accident, drinking, and driving are one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. Eliminating drunk drivers off the road might potentially save many lives. This article proposes a straightforward in-vehicle alcohol detection system that analyses data from six MQ-3 alcohol sensors using an optimizable shallow neural network (O-SNN). The results of the experimental evaluation show a high-performance detection system, which has a detection accuracy of 99.8% and an inferencing delay of 2.22 seconds. The proposed model may therefore be successfully applied in the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) system, which seeks to broadly deploy alcohol-sensing devices, to precisely identify in-vehicle alcohol with minimum inference overhead. 75% of all crashes are the result of drunk driving. Based on recent government research, drunk driving is at fault for 75% of all accidents on the road. Every 40 to 70 minutes, an accident occurs in smaller cities. According to government estimates, not using a seat belt results in 100 accidents and 25–27 fatalities. This project is constructed using the open-source electronics platform Arduino. It can read data from light sensors and convert it into outputs that start a motor. As a result, there is limited inference regarding drinking in vehicles. The suggested approach might be used to correctly identify drivers who are under the influence of alcohol.

A Lightweight In-Vehicle Alcohol Detection Using Smart Sensing and Supervised Learning

According to the risk investigations of being involved in an accident, alcohol-impaired driving is one of the major causes of motor vehicle accidents. Preventing highly intoxicated persons from driving could potentially save many lives. This paper proposes a lightweight in-vehicle alcohol detection that processes the data generated from six alcohol sensors (MQ-3 alcohol sensors) using an optimizable shallow neural network (O-SNN). The experimental evaluation results exhibit a high-performance detection system, scoring a 99.8% detection accuracy with a very short inferencing delay of 2.22 μs. Hence, the proposed model can be efficiently deployed and used to discover in-vehicle alcohol with high accuracy and low inference overhead as a part of the driver alcohol detection system for safety (DADSS) system aiming at the massive deployment of alcohol-sensing systems that could potentially save thousands of lives annually.

Effect of Daylight Saving Time clock shifts on white-tailed deer-vehicle collision rates

To devise effective measures for reducing hazardous wildlife-vehicle collisions, it is necessary to know when during the year accidents occur most frequently, and what factors cause the seasonal patterns. Daylight Saving Time (DST) 1-h clock-shifts around the spring and fall equinoxes at temperate zone latitudes are associated with increased vehicle accidents, attributed to driver error caused by disrupted sleep patterns and changes in visibility during peak driving times. Collision with deer is a significant cause of motor vehicle accidents in North America; in New York State alone, 65,000 vehicle accidents annually are caused by collision with white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We asked whether white-tailed deer-vehicle collisions (DVC) increased in frequency after DST clock shifts in New York State, by analyzing 35,167 New York State DVC reports from 2005 to 2007. For the spring, when the clock is shifted an hour forward relative to sunrise (i.e. later sunrise and sunset), there was either no change or possibly a small decrease in workweek evening DVC after the clock shift. For fall, when the clock is shifted an hour back relative to sunrise (i.e. earlier sunrise and sunset), the DVC rate was far higher than spring. The DVC rate was higher after the clock shift than before, caused in part by an ongoing seasonal trend for increasing DVC associated with deer behavior around the time of rut, peaking about two weeks after the clock shift. However, there was also a reduction in workweek morning DVC after clock-shift, but an even greater increase in DVC in the evening. DVC rates are highest around dusk and during the fall, and the fall DST clock-shift caused more workweek commuter traffic to coincide with the annual hourly period of peak risk of DVC. We conclude that in New York State, DST clock-shift results in an increase in the number of DVC, and therefore injuries and property damage associated with such accidents. The justification for DST clock-shifts is controversial; when evaluating the benefits and costs, one should include the consequences for risk of wildlife-vehicle collisions, especially in regions where ungulate-vehicle accidents are frequent, and clock-shifts coincide with the rut or other periods of peak accident risk.

The Pattern of Facial Injury among Foreign Travelers in Bali: A Retrospective Study

BACKGROUND: Injury, especially road traffic accident caused injury, was the most cause of death in international traveler worldwide. Estimated more than 1 million people deaths and become disability after injury. Facial fracture was the most common injury in plastic surgery division among international traveler. 
 AIM: This study is aimed to describe the pattern of facial fracture among foreign travelers in Bali to provide prompt prevention and treatment. 
 METHODS: The retrospective study was did using the medical record, imaging analysis including computed tomographies and conventional radiographs of 126 cases of facial fracture from the period of January 2009 to September 2012. The patterns of facial fractures were divided into four main categories of craniofacial, maxillofacial, nasal, and mandibulofacial. 
 RESULTS: The result showed that fractures involving nasal region were the most common (n = 65, 51.6%) followed by midface region (n = 58, 46.0%), craniofacial (n = 50, 39.7%), and mandibulofacial (n = 20, 15.9%), respectively. 
 CONCLUSION: It can be concluded, nasal fracture and midfacial fracture were the most common type of facial fracture with the major cause of motor vehicle accidents.

Non-Intrusive Detection of Drowsy Driving Based on Eye Tracking Data

Drowsy driving is one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents in North America. This paper presents the use of eye tracking data as a non-intrusive measure of driver behavior for detection of drowsiness. Eye tracking data were acquired from 53 subjects in a simulated driving experiment, whereas the simultaneously recorded multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were used as the baseline. A random forest (RF) and a non-linear support vector machine (SVM) were employed for binary classification of the state of vigilance. Different lengths of eye tracking epoch were selected for feature extraction, and the performance of each classifier was investigated for every epoch length. Results revealed a high accuracy for the RF classifier in the range of 88.37% to 91.18% across all epoch lengths, outperforming the SVM with 77.12% to 82.62% accuracy. A feature analysis approach was presented and top eye tracking features for drowsiness detection were identified. Altogether, this study showed a high correspondence between the extracted eye tracking features and EEG as a physiological measure of vigilance and verified the potential of these features along with a proper classification technique, such as the RF, for non-intrusive long-term assessment of drowsiness in drivers. This research would ultimately lead to development of technologies for real-time assessment of the state of vigilance, providing early warning of fatigue and drowsiness in drivers.

Risk of Motor Vehicle Accidents Related to Sleepiness at the Wheel: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Study objectives Sleepiness at the wheel is widely believed to be a cause of motor vehicle accidents. Nevertheless, a systematic review of studies investigating this relationship has not yet been published. The objective of this study was to quantify the relationship between sleepiness at the wheel and motor vehicle accidents. Methods A systematic review was performed using Medline, Scopus, and ISI Web of Science. The outcome measure of interest was motor vehicle accident defined as involving four- or two-wheeled vehicles in road traffic, professional and nonprofessional drivers, with or without objective consequences. The exposure was sleepiness at the wheel defined as self-reported sleepiness at the wheel. Studies were included if they provided adjusted risk estimates of motor vehicle accidents related to sleepiness at the wheel. Risk estimates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were extracted and pooled as odds ratios (ORs) using a random-effect model. Heterogeneity was quantified using Q statistics and the I2 index. The potential causes of heterogeneity were investigated using meta-regressions. Results Ten cross-sectional studies (51,520 participants), six case-control studies (4904 participants), and one cohort study (13,674 participants) were included. Sleepiness at the wheel was associated with an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents (pooled OR 2.51 [95% CI 1.87; 3.39]). A significant heterogeneity was found between the individual risk estimates (Q = 93.21; I2 = 83%). Conclusions Sleepiness at the wheel increases the risk of motor vehicle accidents and should be considered when investigating fitness to drive. Further studies are required to explore the nature of this relationship. Systematic review registration number PROSPERO 2015 CRD42015024805.

Is improved lane keeping during cognitive load caused by increased physical arousal or gaze concentration toward the road center?

Driver distraction is one of the main causes of motor-vehicle accidents. However, the impact on traffic safety of tasks that impose cognitive (non-visual) distraction remains debated. One particularly intriguing finding is that cognitive load seems to improve lane keeping performance, most often quantified as reduced standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP). The main competing hypotheses, supported by current empirical evidence, suggest that cognitive load improves lane keeping via either increased physical arousal, or higher gaze concentration toward the road center, but views are mixed regarding if, and how, these possible mediators influence lane keeping performance. Hence, a simulator study was conducted, with participants driving on a straight city road section whilst completing a cognitive task at different levels of difficulty. In line with previous studies, cognitive load led to increased physical arousal, higher gaze concentration toward the road center, and higher levels of micro-steering activity, accompanied by improved lane keeping performance. More importantly, during the high cognitive task, both physical arousal and gaze concentration changed earlier in time than micro-steering activity, which in turn changed earlier than lane keeping performance. In addition, our results did not show a significant correlation between gaze concentration and physical arousal on the level of individual task recordings. Based on these findings, various multilevel models for micro-steering activity and lane keeping performance were conducted and compared, and the results suggest that all of the mechanisms proposed by existing hypotheses could be simultaneously involved. In other words, it is suggested that cognitive load leads to: (i) an increase in arousal, causing increased micro-steering activity, which in turn improves lane keeping performance, and (ii) an increase in gaze concentration, causing lane keeping improvement through both (a) further increased micro-steering activity and (b) a tendency to steer toward the gaze target.

Relationship of Quality of Sleep in Adolescents and Young Adults to the Driving Performance

Introduction: Sleep deprivation is a major cause of motor vehicle accidents, and can impair the human brain as much as alcohol. It has been estimated that between 16% and 60% of all motor vehicle accidents are caused by sleep related problems. Adolescents and young adults frequently complain of sleep disorder symptoms and suffer from chronic sleep deprivation. There is an absence of evidence in existing literature regarding the impact of sleep disturbances on the driving function in young, novice drivers compared to that in young adults. Materials and Methods: This study is a prospective cohort study of two subject groups: young adults with driving experience of less than 36 months, and young adults with driving experience of greater than 36 months). Each subject served as its own control. The enrolled subjects are 16 – 26 years old, right-handed, with normalor corrected vision. Participants with a chronic or acute ongoing health condition which might affect the study results were excluded. Study procedures utilized were: polysomnography, multiple sleep latency test and driving simulator testing. Results: Repeated-measures MANCOVA revealed that driving experience, objective sleepiness (as measured by the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT)), interaction between driving experience and depressive symptoms (as measured by The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale Revised (CESD-R)), and interaction between depressive symptoms and objective sleepiness had statistically significant effects on driving performance. Conclusion: Unexpectedly, more experienced drivers made more driving errors and were responsible for a greater number of accidents. Mood and ongoing sleep deprivation emerged as two key factors that impacted driving performance more than level of experience. This may represent the impact of a less-regulated post high school lifestyle, as compared to more structured high school schedule. The study findings aid in confirming that functional impairments related to sleepiness previously observed in adult study populations are also replicated in adolescents and young adults.

Risk of Motor Vehicle Accidents Related to Sleepiness at the Wheel: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Sleepiness at the wheel is widely believed to be a cause of motor vehicle accidents. Nevertheless, a systematic review of studies investigating this relationship has not yet been published. The objective of this study was to quantify the relationship between sleepiness at the wheel and motor vehicle accidents. A systematic review was performed using Medline, Scopus, and ISI Web of Science. The outcome measure of interest was motor vehicle accident defined as involving four- or two-wheeled vehicles in road traffic, professional and nonprofessional drivers, with or without objective consequences. The exposure was sleepiness at the wheel defined as self-reported sleepiness at the wheel. Studies were included if they provided adjusted risk estimates of motor vehicle accidents related to sleepiness at the wheel. Risk estimates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were extracted and pooled as odds ratios (ORs) using a random-effect model. Heterogeneity was quantified using Q statistics and the I2 index. The potential causes of heterogeneity were investigated using meta-regressions. Ten cross-sectional studies (51,520 participants), six case-control studies (4904 participants), and one cohort study (13,674 participants) were included. Sleepiness at the wheel was associated with an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents (pooled OR 2.51 [95% CI 1.87; 3.39]). A significant heterogeneity was found between the individual risk estimates (Q = 93.21; I2 = 83%). Sleepiness at the wheel increases the risk of motor vehicle accidents and should be considered when investigating fitness to drive. Further studies are required to explore the nature of this relationship. PROSPERO 2015 CRD42015024805.

Potentially Driver-Impairing Medications: Risks and Strategies for Injury Prevention.

Impaired driving is a major cause of motor vehicle accidents, injury, and fatality. Several classes of medication have been found to affect a driver's cognition, judgment, and reaction time and may put patients at increased risk for accidents and injury. This article will explore medications with side effects posing a potential threat to drivers, including anxiolytics, sedative hypnotics, antihistamines, and antidepressants, as well as describe potential strategies for mitigating or minimizing such risks.

Emotion matters: Implications for distracted driving

Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. Roadside billboards containing negative and positive emotional content have been shown to influence driving behaviour by modulating attention; however, the impact of emotion-related auditory distraction on driving is relatively unknown. In the present study, we explored the behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) effects elicited by auditorily presented words of different emotional valence during driving (dual-task) and non-driving (single-task) conditions. The results demonstrate that emotion-related auditory distraction can differentially affect driving performance depending on the valence of the emotional content. Negative distractions reduced lateral control and slowed driving speeds compared to positive and neutral distractions. On the other hand, the results revealed an arousal effect on memory and decision-making during driving as performance improved with both negative and positive distractions. Finally, ERPs elicited by the auditory distractions were reduced in amplitude during driving compared to non-driving, revealing a division of cognitive resources under dual-task demands. These findings have important implications for road safety and bring to light the detrimental effects of negative emotional auditory content on driving performance. Furthermore, these findings show that emotional valence and arousal can differentially influence behaviour.

The emotional side of cognitive distraction: Implications for road safety

Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. However, little is known about the role of emotional distraction on driving, despite evidence that attention is highly biased toward emotion. In the present study, we used a dual-task paradigm to examine the potential for driver distraction from emotional information presented on roadside billboards. This purpose was achieved using a driving simulator and three different types of emotional information: neutral words, negative emotional words, and positive emotional words. Participants also responded to target words while driving and completed a surprise free recall task of all the words at the end of the study. The findings suggest that driving performance is differentially affected by the valence (negative versus positive) of the emotional content. Drivers had lower mean speeds when there were emotional words compared to neutral words, and this slowing effect lasted longer when there were positive words. This may be due to distraction effects on driving behavior, which are greater for positive arousing stimuli. Moreover, when required to process non-emotional target stimuli, drivers had faster mean speeds in conditions where the targets were interspersed with emotional words compared to neutral words, and again, these effects lasted longer when there were positive words. On the other hand, negative information led to better memory recall. These unique effects may be due to separate processes in the human attention system, particularly related to arousal mechanisms and their interaction with emotion. We conclude that distraction that is emotion-based can modulate attention and decision-making abilities and have adverse impacts on driving behavior for several reasons.

Motor vehicle accidents: How should cirrhotic patients be managed?

Motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) are serious social issues worldwide and driver illness is an important cause of MVAs. Minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) is a complex cognitive dysfunction with attention deficit, which frequently occurs in cirrhotic patients independent of severity of liver disease. Although MHE is known as a risk factor for MVAs, the impact of diagnosis and treatment of MHE on MVA-related societal costs is largely unknown. Recently, Bajaj et al demonstrated valuable findings that the diagnosis of MHE by rapid screening using the inhibitory control test (ICT), and subsequent treatment with lactulose could substantially reduce the societal costs by preventing MVAs. Besides the ICT and lactulose, there are various diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies for MHE. In this commentary, we discussed a current issue of diagnostic tools for MHE, including neuropsychological tests. We also discussed the advantages of the other therapeutic strategies for MHE, such as intake of a regular breakfast and coffee, and supplementation with zinc and branched chain amino acids, on the MVA-related societal costs.

Short Term Modafinil Use During Sleep Disorder Evaluations: Focus on High Risk Professions and Behaviors

Patients can present with undiagnosed sleep disorders. Modest fatigue can impair their neurological, functional and psychological capacities. Four patients demonstrated improved functioning on modafinil, during the months required for a complete sleep evaluation, specialist consults and successful treatment. Sleep disorders increase morbidity or mortality until definitive diagnosis and full treatment. In four patients, modafinil was immediately useful as a bridging medication over 3-7 months until final successful diagnosis and treatment. Even one month of significant fatigue is unacceptable. For example, driving a motor vehicle is dangerous with some sleep disorders. Falling asleep driving or involuntary “minisleep” at the wheel is a common cause of motor vehicle accidents.1 In the United States, sleep causes at least 56, 000 motor vehicle crashes each year, resulting in 1, 550 deaths.2 Over a year, 10% of men and 4% of women admitted to falling asleep while driving.3 Insight into drowsiness can be flawed, lagging behind electroencephalographic and other evidence that the process of falling asleep has actually started.4 In clinical care, the patient may be sleepy or fatigued, but not a clear risk to drive or work. Further, many occupations do not allow for fatigue, sleepiness and errors, e.g., truck drivers, heavy construction operators, nurses dispensing medications, pilots, boat captains, military and police personnel using dangerous equipment, and childcare workers with children. Modafinil was used because it may be more selective than traditional stimulants, has a low abuse potential, is already used in many specific sleep disorders, and has a reasonable safety record. Modafinil's mechanism as a waking agent appears to be a more selective than amphetamine or methylphenidate in cats, 5 possibly causing less emotional side effects in humans, e.g., agitation and rebound depression. Perhaps due to this proposed selectivity, modafinil receives low ratings for abuse desirability, 6 and with a low solubility in water and instability at high temperatures, I.V. injections and smoking were less likely. 7 These are some reasons that modafinil might be considered in light of the non-specificity and addiction potential of traditional stimulants. Modafinil has cognitive benefits in aviation alertness and functioning. 8, 9 It decreases fatigue in narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke and fibromyalgia.10,11,12,13,14,15 Also, medically fragile patients seemed to tolerate modafinil. Our patients were much healthier than those treated with Parkinson's disease, stroke and multiple sclerosis. These private patients were all waiting for a sleep specialist appointment. They read handouts on the common use of modafinil, e.g., narcolepsy. However, they understood they were trying it for the off-label purpose of daytime sleepiness. Rare questions were answered to their satisfaction.

Camel collision as a major cause of low cervical spinal cord injury.

One hundred and forty patients with low cervical spinal cord injuries, who were admitted to the Riyadh Armed Forces Hospital over the past 10 years were reviewed. Motor vehicle accidents constituted 119 (85%) of the patients. Camel collisions were a major cause of vehicle accidents 39 (33%), after rollover accidents 70 (59%), and much more than head on collisions 9 (7.5%). Male to female ratio was 14:1 with a mean age of 32 years. Camel collision although a commonly observed cause of motor vehicle accidents in the Middle East has not been mentioned in the literature before. The mechanism of injury is not much different, but the exact description of the accident and sustaining injury is interesting because it leads to localised damage to the neck without major body trauma and mortality.

Vasovagal syncope as a cause of motor vehicle accidents

Motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) are the leading cause of death from all accidents in the United States.’ The medical causes include narcolepsy, seizure disorders, alcoholism, carotid sinus syndrome,2 and even tussive syncope.3 Vasovagal syncope has not been reported previously as a cause of MVAs. At North Shore University Hospital-Cornell University Medical College, 68 head-up tilt-table tests have been performed for unexplained syncope. Of those syncopal events, two involved patients who caused MVAs. The following case reports illustrate the importance of this diagnosis and the use of head-up tilt-table tests to determine the diagnosis and to guide therapy. Head-up tilttable tests were performed in the fasting state. Patients were connected to a standard 12-lead electrocardiographic (ECG) recorder for continuous monitoring and to a sphygmomanometer for blood pressure recordings. Baseline measurements of heart rate, blood pressure, and 12-lead ECG were obtained while the patient was in the supine position and after 5 minutes of rest. The table was then tilted to 60 degrees for 30 minutes or until syncope (defined as loss of consciousness). If no syncope occurred during the initial tilt, the patient was lowered to the supine position for 5 minutes. With the patient in the supine position, an intravenous isoproterenol infusion was then initiated at 0.5 pg/min and increased every 2 minutes (by 0.5 pglmin) until the patient’s heart rate increased by 20 % . After this was achieved, the patient was again tilted at 60 degrees for 10 minutes or until syncope occurred. Case 1. A 59-year-old man was admitted to the hospital after an MVA. The patient had no previous cardiac or neurologic history and while driving lost consciousness without preceding symptoms or seizure activity. This resulted in an MVA that fatally injured a pedestrian. The patient awoke with no memory of the MVA and reported no presyncopal symptoms. The patient was not incontinent, and no postictal state was noted. He denied having chest pain, palpitations, or shortness of breath. He was found by the paramedics to be oriented with a blood pressure 120/80 mm Hg, a heart rate of 50 beats/min, and a respiratory rate of 16

Countermeasures to Loss of Alertness in Motor Vehicle Drivers: A Taxonomy and Evaluation

Loss of driver alertness is a major cause of motor vehicle accidents. A diversity of possible countermeasures to loss of alertness has been suggested. A proposal taxonomy of these countermeasures, with examples of each class, is presented, and each type is tentatively evaluated in terms of ten criteria of effectiveness. Conclusions about future prospects are presented.

Gauging the Strength and Meaning of the 1978 Tax Revolt

8. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 9. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 10. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 11. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 12. The Effectiveness of Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, General Accounting Office. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976. 13. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. A further indication of NHTSA's disinterest in cost-benefit analysis has been its slowness in developing an adequate data base on the causes of accidents-an essential ingredient for effective cost-benefit analysis. A 1974 GAO Report entitled Need to Improve Benefit-Cost Analysis in Setting Motor Vehicle Safety Standards was critical of the fact that it would be fourteen years after NHTSA's creation before such data was established: The need to know the causes of motor vehicle accidents is crucial to the Safety Administration's ability to develop programs and standards which will allow it to carry out its mission to save lives and reduce injuries. We question whether a program which may not provide the needed data until 1980 represents a level of effort in keeping with the Safety Administration's mission, p. 18. 14. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 15. An alternative, but not wholly incompatible, explanation for the T.V.A. behavior is presented by Phillip Selznick in his classic study T. V.A. and the Grass Roots. 16. The NHTSA administrators and their tenure are as follows: William Haddon, 1966-1968 Interim Acting Administrator 1969 Douglas Toms 1970-1972 James Gregory 1972-1976 John Snow 1976-1977 Joan Claybrook 1977-present 17. Hugh Heclo, A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington. (Washington: Brookings Institution) 1977. 18. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 19. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 20. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 21. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 22. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 23. FederalRegister, Vol. 41, No. 115, June 14, 1976, p. 2402. 24. U.S. Office of Science and Technology, RECAT Report, 1972. The RECA T Report also criticized an over-emphasis on technology: Regulation should not be based upon a blind faith in technology. Establishing standards beyond the known stateof-the-art on the theory that industry can do anything if enough pressure is put on it is not likely to result in wise governmental decision making or to provide the greatest net benefits to society.... The regulation of the automobile is not a game in which higher costs are imposed on the industry, it is the public which must bear the costs.