Stuart Newstead

Monash University (Australia) · Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC)

Objectives: Publicizing safety ratings of vehicles can motivate manufacturers to prioritize safety and help consumers choose safer vehicles, leading to safer fleets. The benefits of primary safety technologies that prevent crash occurrence are not currently incorporated in current ratings in a way that values their safety benefits consistently. We...

While the relationship between vehicle speed and crash risk and severity are well understood, precise quantifications of the attribution of speeding to casualty crashes remains more elusive, due in part to the lack of reliable network-wide speed survey data. A relatively new source of network-wide speed data is Global Positioning System (GPS) probe...

Introduction: Many studies have found that daytime running lights (DRLS) are effective in reducing daytime multi-vehicle crashes. From an Australian perspective, while studies exist using data from other jurisdictions, there has been uncertainty about how effective DRLs would be under Australian environmental conditions, which can differ from othe...

Background Hospital-admitted patients are at risk of certain outcomes during hospital stay. They include admission to intensive care units (ICUs), placement on the ventilator and complications. Comorbidities could increase these risks. The Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and the Elixhauser Comorbidity Measure (ECM), originally derived for mortalit...

Some New Car Assessment Programs (NCAPs) include pedestrian safety ratings based on crash tests. We compared 2,682 real-world Australasian pedestrian injury outcomes with pedestrian safety ratings provided by the Australasian NCAP within the speed limit areas where the collisions occurred. We found that the risk of a pedestrian fatal or severe (inv...

By being able to communicate the speed limit to drivers using speed sign recognition cameras, Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) is expected to bring significant road safety gains through increased speed compliance. In the absence of complete digital speed maps and due to limited cellular connectivity throughout Australia, this study estimated the forg...

Background: Elite junior Australian football players experience high training loads across levels of competition and training. This, in conjunction with impaired wellness, can predispose athletes to injury. Hypothesis: Elite junior Australian football players exposed to high loads with poor wellness are more likely to be at risk of injury than thos...

Drug driving continues to be overrepresented in both fatal and serious injury crashes in Victoria. As an enforcement countermeasure, preliminary oral fluid tests to detect drug driving were introduced in Victoria, Australia in December 2004. Recent research has modelled the relationships between prevalences of THC and methamphetamine in fatally and...

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) provide warnings to drivers and, if applicable, intervene to mitigate a collision if one is imminent. Autonomous emergency brakes (AEB) and lane keep assistance (LKA) systems are mandated in several new vehicles, given their predicted injury and fatality reduction benefits. These predicted benefits are base...

Advanced driver assist systems are being promoted with the expectation that enhanced driver support will mitigate road trauma. While these technologies are optimised for certain road and traffic conditions, not all roads across Australasia are equipped with ADAS-supportive infrastructure. This study developed a desk-top methodology for using road c...

Minibuses are widely used for public transport, particularly in developing countries, yet their safety levels are often poor. This study identified a simple set of active and passive safety measures and 566 minibuses in the United Arab Emirates were inspected. Most vehicles were without seat belts or head restraints and had inadequate seat attachme...

Formulating priorities for future road safety strategies requires supporting analysis to predict what the future crash population will look like and to assess how the countermeasures either already in place or planned will address the crash problems forecast. This analysis aimed to identify future priority action areas for light vehicle safety by i...

Objective: Rollover crashes, which occur when the vehicle's side or roof makes impact with the ground, present particularly serious injury risk. Higher rollover risk has been found for high riding vehicles - those with a relatively high center of gravity compared to the width of the wheel track. Electronic Stability Control (ESC), which automatica...

Mobile speed cameras on Victoria’s rural roads are not as effective as they could be due to the site selection criteria, the limited number of sites, and the visibility and predictability of their enforcement operations. Queensland’s overt mobile speed cameras achieve substantial crash reductions up to 4 km from rural camera sites due to site selec...

Objective: Safe vehicle speeds were identified as a key element in a safe system approach to road safety. The City of Yarra in Melbourne, Australia has a 40 km/h default speed limit across their municipality, but wished to reduce the speed limit in local residential streets to 30 km/h. The Monash University Accident Research Center provided Counci...

Background Existing comorbidity measures predict mortality among general patient populations. Due to the lack of outcome specific and patient-group specific measures, the existing indices are also applied to non-mortality outcomes in injury epidemiology. This study derived indices to capture the association between comorbidity, and burden and readm...

Head restraint systems specifically engineered to reduce the impact of whiplash injury in the event of a rear-end collision were introduced in the late 1990s with the aim of reducing whiplash injury risk that went 'beyond simple geometric improvements’ to head restraints. Whilst studies have shown that whiplash-reducing head restraint systems are h...

To deter the performance of illegal driving behaviours, traffic infringement notices may be issued. Whilst there is a substantial body of research that has examined rates of reoffending following a traffic infringement, there have been few studies examining the length of time to next traffic offence. Where this research has been conducted, the find...

Monash University Accident Research Centre conducted an evaluation of the potential benefits of AEB in light and heavy vehicles in Australia. Crash and crash injury benefits were modelled on police reported crash data on crashes occurring in Australia between 2013-2016 inclusive. The classification of sensitive crashes, those potentially mitigated...

Observed variation on the measured real-world safety of light passenger vehicles suggests there is considerable opportunity to improve road traffic injury outcomes by improving the safety of vehicles. This study examined features of the 2016 Australian crashed vehicle population, including the way the safety of vehicles varied within years of manuf...

Background Hospital-admitted patients are at risk of experiencing certain adverse outcomes during their hospital-stay. Patients may need to be admitted to the intensive care unit or be placed on the ventilator while there is also a possibility for complications to develop. Pre-existing comorbidity could increase the risk of these outcomes. The Char...

This study aimed to determine whether receiving a traffic infringement has a deterring influence on subsequent risky driving, measured through risk of crash involvement. Licensing, infringements and crash data for drivers aged 40+ from the Australian state of Victoria were analysed. A case-case-time-control study design was used. Overall, the odds...

BLUF Quantifying load and soreness in elite junior Australian football players can help to optimise player management and reduce the risk of adverse events such as injury. INTRODUCTION To investigate the associations between load (training and competition), soreness and injury in elite junior Australian football (AF) players across one competitive...

Background: People who have mental illness are at increased risk of suicide. Therefore, identifying "typical" trajectories to suicide in this population has the potential to improve the effectiveness of suicide prevention strategies. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the pathways to suicide among a sample of Victorians with a diagnosed ment...

Purpose: To investigate the association between training and match loads and injury in elite junior Australian football players Q1 over one competitive season. Methods: Elite junior Australian football players (n = 290, aged 17.7 [0.3], range: 16–18 y) were recruited from the under-18 state league competition in Victoria to report load and injury i...

Objective: This study aimed to identify stressors over‐represented in the 12 months prior to death among 553 Victorian adults who died by suicide. Methods: Age‐ and sex‐specific suicide rates and relative risks of suicide were calculated using numerator data on suicides occurring in 2013 by people with a given exposure sourced from the Victorian Su...

Compared with crashes with motor vehicles, single-bicycle crashes are an under-recognised contributor to cycling injury and the aetiology is poorly understood. Using an in-depth crash investigation technique, this study describes the crash characteristics and patient outcomes of a sample of cyclists admitted to hospital following on-road bicycle cr...

Background: Mental illness is an established risk factor for suicide. To develop effective prevention interventions and strategies, the demographic characteristics and stressors (other than, or in addition to, mental illness) that can influence a person's decision to die by suicide need to be identified. Aim: To examine cases of suicide by the p...

Objective: To determine whether people who died by suicide form groups based on demographic, psychosocial, mental and physical health factors and exposure to stressors. Methods: Retrospective case series review of persons who died by suicide in Victoria, Australia (2009-2013). A two-stage cluster analysis was performed. Results: The total samp...

This study reports good consistency in international comparisons of the number and severity of backover crashes. More than half occurred to pedestrians aged 60 years and older. Children less than 9 years comprised 5% of these crashes with a similar percent aged 10 to 19 years. A significant 41% reduction in real-world backover crashes was found for...

Objective: This study used medicolegal data to investigate fatal older road user (ORU) crash circumstances and risk factors relating to four key components of the Safe System approach (e.g., roads and roadsides, vehicles, road users, and speeds) to identify areas of priority for targeted prevention activity. Methods: The Coroners Court of Victoria'...

Objective: This study used medico-legal data to investigate fatal older road user (ORU, aged 65 years and older) crash circumstances and risk factors relating to four key components of the Safe System approach (e.g., roads and roadsides, vehicles, road users and speeds) to identify areas of priority for targeted prevention activity. Method: The...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of physical preparation for bushfire among Victorian residents in established high risk bushfire locations, and to assess whether these levels of preparation changed over time. Design/methodology/approach Data were analysed from a telephone survey among Victorian residents ( n =614-629) liv...

Backover injuries to pedestrians are a significant road safety issue, but their prevalence is underestimated as the majority of such injuries are often outside the scope of official road injury recording systems, which just focus on public roads. Based on experimental evidence, reversing cameras have been found to be effective in reducing the rate...

Introduction The increased popularity of powered two wheelers (PTWs) in Australia, combined with their vulnerability in the event of a crash, necessitates new strategies to prevent serious injury crashes. The purpose of this study was to use case-series data collected from a recent motorcycle case-control study to analyse contributing factors to cr...

Background On urban roads, road users interact in a highly complex environment. Few previous multivariable studies investigated the association between the built urban environment (including the road, roadside and human activity) and crashes. Roadside design and amenities and facilities that impact road user movements were rarely considered. This r...

The aim of this study was to describe the crash characteristics and patient outcomes of a sample of patients admitted to hospital following bicycle crashes. Injured cyclists were recruited from the two major trauma services for the state of Victoria, Australia. Enrolled cyclists completed a structured interview, and injury details and patient outco...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the nature and extent of current powered two-wheeler (PTW) risk exposures in order to support future efforts to improve safety for this mode of transport. Methods: A cross sectional analysis of the control arm of a population based case control study was conducted. The control sample was selec...

Significant reductions in road trauma among young drivers could be achieved if they drove safer vehicles. Parents are likely to play a critical role in the access, timing of vehicle purchase, available budget, and vehicle choice for the young driver's first vehicle. However, little attention has been directed to understanding the most effective com...

Objective: Vehicle safety rating systems aim firstly to inform consumers about safe vehicle choices and secondly to encourage vehicle manufacturers to aspire to safer levels of vehicle performance. Primary rating systems (that measure the ability of a vehicle to assist the driver in avoiding crashes) have not been developed for a variety of reason...

Objective: Pedestrians are among the most vulnerable road users in terms of their risk of serious injury when involved in a collision with a vehicle. In Australia, around 200 pedestrians are killed in road crashes annually and over 2,000 are seriously injured. The objective of the current study was to analyze pedestrian death and injury risk by bo...

Objectives: Modeling crash risk in urban areas is more complicated than in rural areas due to the complexity of the environment and the difficulty obtaining data to fully characterize the road and surrounding environment. Knowledge of factors that impact crash risk and severity in urban areas can be used for countermeasure development and the desi...

Full text:h ttp://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/216489/muarc324.pdf

It is estimated that more than 1.2 million people die worldwide as a result of road traffic crashes and some 50 million are injured per annum. At present some Western countries' road safety strategies and countermeasures claim to have developed into 'Safe Systems' models to address the effects of road related crashes. Well-constructed models encour...

Objective: To estimate the effect of the 2005 Victorian mandatory personal flotation device (PFD) wearing regulations on PFD use by occupants of small (hull length ≤4.8 m) power recreational vessels. Design: Before-after observational study investigating the probability of PFD use among occupants of small vessels before and after the regulations...

A key tenet of the safety in numbers theory is that as the number of people cycling increases, more drivers will also be cyclists and therefore will give greater consideration to cyclists when driving. We tested this theory in relation to self-reported behaviour, attitudes and knowledge in relation to cycling. An online survey was conducted of Aust...

A cyclist crash with an open vehicle door can result in serious injury, sometimes fatal, outcomes. However, little is known about the frequency and range of injury outcomes of this crash type or the contributing factors. In this study, the factors associated with cyclist-open vehicle door collisions in Victoria, Australia were investigated using th...

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the importance of vehicle safety to older consumers in the vehicle purchase process. Methods: Older (n = 102), middle-aged (n = 791), and younger (n = 109) participants throughout the eastern Australian states of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland who had recently purchased a new or used vehicle...

Full report: https://rsc.wa.gov.au/Documents/Vehicles/ors-vehicles-cmarc-fleet-full-report.aspx

Although previous research suggests that safety benefits accrue from periodic vehicle inspection programmes, little consideration has been given to whether the benefits are sufficient to justify the often considerable costs of such schemes. Methodological barriers impede many attempts to evaluate the overall safety benefits of periodic vehicle insp...

Objective: Because young drivers' vehicles have been found to offer poor occupant protection in many countries, this study sought to identify the most appropriate audience for information and publicity designed to change purchasing preferences to improve these vehicles and resultant injury outcomes. Methods: An analysis of New Zealand vehicles c...

Side airbag systems were first introduced into vehicles around 1995 to help protect occupants from injury in side impact crashes. International studies have shown that side airbags are effective in reducing the risk of death and injury, however, serious injuries can still occur even when side airbags deploy. The objective of this study was to use d...

Background Motorcycle sales, registration and use are increasing in many countries. The epidemiological literature on risk factors for motorcycle injury is becoming outdated, due to changes in rider demography, licensing regulations, traffic mix and density, road environments, and motorcycle designs and technologies. Further, the potential contribu...

This study examined older driver engagement in distracting behaviours (secondary activities) at intersections using naturalistic driving data from a larger study based in Melbourne, Australia. Of interest was whether engagement in secondary activities at intersections was influenced by factors such as driver gender and situational variables, in par...

Young drivers persistently have higher crash rates despite various countermeasures targeted at their risk factors and exposures. A potentially high risk situation for novice drivers may feasibly include the driving of high performance vehicles, which are subject to restrictions for probationary and restricted drivers in four Australian States. High...

This study investigated parents' attitudes, knowledge and behaviours relating to safe child occupant travel following new Australian legislation regarding child restraint system (CRS) and motor vehicle restraint use for children aged 7 years and under. A questionnaire exploring attitudes, knowledge and behaviours regarding general road safety, as w...

As in other parts of the Western world, there is concern in New Zealand about increasing popularity of motorcycles because of potential increases in road trauma. This study sought to identify important factors associated with increased risk for motorcyclists to inform potential policy approaches to reduce motorcyclist injury, such as changes to mot...

Background In Victoria, children aged 0–9 years account for 83% of hospital admissions and 73% of hospital presentations for dog bite injury. More than two thirds of bites to children occur in a domestic setting. Aim/Objectives/Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate risk factors for dog bite-related injury in a domestic setting to childre...

This study investigated the behavioural, attitudinal and traffic factors contributing to red light infringement by Australian cyclists using a national online survey. The survey was conducted from February to May 2010. In total, 2061 cyclists completed the survey and 37.3% reported that they had ridden through a signalised intersection during the r...

Both the effect of macroeconomic influences on transport and the effect of transport factors on road safety have been separately investigated to some degree. However, relationships between macroeconomic factors and road safety are rarely recognised or researched, despite their value for understanding underlying influences on road safety outcomes. M...

Acute orthopedic trauma contributes substantially to the global burden of disease. The present systematic review aimed to summarize the current knowledge concerning prognostic factors for the presence of persistent pain, pain severity and pain-related disability following acute orthopedic trauma involving a spectrum of pathologies to working-age ad...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the crash effects of 87 signed fixed digital speed and red light (FDSRL) cameras and accompanying warning signs placed at 77 signalised intersections across Victoria. Fixed Speed cameras have been shown to be generally effective at decreasing crash rates whilst the effectiveness of Red Light Cameras (RLCs) to r...

Various systems for rating secondary safety of particular makes and models of vehicles have been developed internationally. These measures generally evaluate crashworthiness (the ability of the vehicle to protect its own occupants in the event of a crash) separately from aggressivity (the harm a vehicle is liable to impose on other road users into...

Vehicle fleets in developed countries have benefitted from improved technology and regulation leading to safer vehicles. Nevertheless, for various reasons the public do not necessarily choose particular makes and models of cars according to their safety performance. This study aimed to identify areas for potential crashworthiness improvement in the...

This study determined the rate and associated factors of red light infringement among urban commuter cyclists. A cross-sectional observational study was conducted using a covert video camera to record cyclists at 10 sites across metropolitan Melbourne, Australia from October 2008 to April 2009. In total, 4225 cyclists faced a red light and 6.9% wer...

and by a grant from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau

An often asked question regarding vehicle safety is whether vehicle colour has an influence on crash risk and if so, what is the differential in risk between the various colours of vehicles available. The major objective of this study was to assess the relationship between vehicle colour and crash risk through the analysis of real crash outcomes de...

To test whether return to work as a binary (yes/no) outcome that includes all persons who returned to work regardless of mode of return reflects a composite or a homogeneous outcome in a cohort of workers who have sustained acute orthopaedic trauma resulting in hospitalisation. Prospective cohort study. One hundred and sixty-eight participants were...

Preventing disability and offering effective interventions to older people during early decline in function is most likely to be effective if those most at risk of progressive disablement are able to be identified. Similarly the ability to easily identify a group with similar functional profile from disparate sectors of the community is of signific...

This study assessed the relative effects of two intelligent speed adaptation (ISA) systems (informative and actively supporting) on simulated driving performance and acceptability in a sample of inexperienced and experienced drivers. Participants drove a series of simulated drives under three conditions: no ISA (control), ISA informative and ISA ac...

Unlabelled: The study quantifies the association between a range of bio-psychosocial factors and the presence of persistent pain, pain severity and pain interfering with normal work activities in a cohort of 168 patients with a range of non-life-threatening orthopaedic injuries. Participants were recruited following presentation to 1 of 4 Victoria...

Acute orthopaedic trauma is a major contributor to the global burden of disease. This study aims to synthesise and summarise current knowledge concerning prognostic factors for return to work and duration of work disability following acute orthopaedic trauma. A systematic review of prognostic studies was performed. The Medline, Embase, PsychINFO, C...

To determine factors associated with return to work following acute non-life-threatening orthopaedic trauma. Prospective cohort study. One hundred and sixty-eight participants were recruited and followed for 6 months. The study achieved 89% participant follow-up. Baseline data were obtained by survey and medical record review. Participants were fur...

To determine factors predicting the duration of time away from work following acute orthopaedic non life threatening trauma Prospective cohort study conducted at four hospitals in Victoria, Australia. The cohort comprised 168 patients aged 18-64 years who were working prior to the injury and sustained a range of acute unintentional orthopaedic inju...

The study aim was to identify risk factors for collisions/near-collisions involving on-road commuter cyclists and drivers. A naturalistic cycling study was conducted in Melbourne, Australia, with cyclists wearing helmet-mounted video cameras. Video recordings captured cyclists' perspective of the road and traffic behaviours including head checks, r...

The objective of this study was to find a comparison crash type that best represented exposure on the road and to identify situations where the induced exposure risk estimates were likely to be biased. Counts of crash involvements were compared with distance driven estimates derived from a register of licensed motor vehicles to identify the most ap...

This study aimed to model rollover risk of New Zealand and Australian passenger vehicles to identify which driver and vehicle factors were associated with the highest risk of rollover. A further objective was to test the feasibility and reliability of the quasi-induced risk estimation approach for studying rollover risk. The most appropriate compar...

This paper presents an overview of road accidents in Australia, updating earlier studies while also covering the ten-year period from 1998 to 2007. It notes that while road deaths peaked at almost 4,000 deaths in 1970, and fell to below 2,000 by 1993, since 2003 fatality levels have remained stagnant at a little over 1,500 deaths annually. The auth...

To assess whether different licensing policies were associated with different fatality levels, the fatality outcomes of older drivers in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) were compared. In Victoria, there is no age-based assessment required for re-licensing, while in NSW, drivers aged 80 years and older are required to provide annual medical certi...

Electronic stability control (ESC) is an in-vehicle technology aimed at improving primary safety by assisting the driver in avoiding loss of control of the vehicle. The aim of this study was to use available crash data from Australia and New Zealand to evaluate the effectiveness of ESC in reducing crash risk and to establish whether benefits estima...

This study was a population cohort study of all licensed passenger vehicles in New Zealand in the years 2005--2006. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect on road safety of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) compared to other passenger vehicle types. Statistical models were fitted to the population of 2,996,000 vehicles of which 17,245 w...

To investigate the extent to which older drivers pose a risk to other road users, relative to drivers of other ages, using Australian fatal crash data. The principal data source was the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's National Fatalities Database, which has provided fatality numbers for the most recent available 10-year period (1988, 1990, 199...

In the year 2000, as part of the process for setting New Zealand road safety targets, a projection was made for a reduction in social cost of 15.5 percent associated with improvements in crashworthiness, which is a measure of the occupant protection of the light passenger vehicle fleet. Since that document was produced, new estimates of crashworthi...