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A Comprehensive Assessment of Highway Inventory Data Collection Methods
Get PDFThe implementation of the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) at the state level has the potential to allow transportation agencies to proactively address safety concerns. However, the widespread utilization of HSM faces significant barriers as many state departments of transportations (DOTs) do not have sufficient HSM-required highway inventory data. Many techniques have been utilized by state DOTs and local agencies to collect highway inventory data for other purposes. Nevertheless, it is unknown which of these methods or any combination of them is capable of efficiently collecting the required dataset while minimizing cost and safety concerns. The focus of this study is to characterize the capability of existing methods for collecting highway inventory data vital to the implementation of the recently published HSM. More specifically, this study evaluated existing highway inventory methods through a nationwide survey and a field trial of identified promising highway inventory data collection (HIDC) methods on various types of highway segments. A comparative analysis was conducted to present an example on how to incorporate weights provided by state DOT stakeholders to select the most suitable HIDC method for the specific purpose
Identifying Traffic Safety Practices and Needs of Local Transportation and Law Enforcement Agencies
Get PDFAs part of the effort to implement the Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP), state departments of transportation are looking to reach out to local and law enforcement agencies. This paper presents a study by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to identify the existing safety practices and needs of local transportation agencies and law enforcement offices in Florida. Two comprehensive online surveys targeting local transportation agencies and law enforcement agencies are developed. The survey for local transportation agencies includes 39 questions on topics including standardization of crash analysis methods, training needs, and working with FDOT. For law enforcement agencies, the survey includes 25 questions covering topics on enforcement locations, traffic violations and safety campaigns, use of crash reports, and working with transportation agencies. Results from both surveys and lessons learned are discussed
Organisms and Objectifications: A Historical-Materialist Inquiry into the “Human and Animal”
Get PDFIn order to respond to the problem addressed by this volume, I must reformulate its title, “Defining the Human and Animal”, by replacing the conjunctive 'and' with 'as'. Because this essay is based on the not too far-fetched assumption that Homo sapiens is an animal species, it addresses the question of defining the human as animal. To do so, it takes its cue from an offhand, never systematically elaborated statement by Karl Marx that, by taking the body seriously, situates human beings in the animal world, namely: “The first fact to be established for historical theory is human corporeal organization” (and fully in keeping with Marx’s—and Darwin’s—logic, that the same is true for the history of all species). The way in which any organism, humans included, negotiates, inhabits, and transforms its world is inextricably linked to its corporeal organization. Accordingly, rather than attempt to define the human and animal, my concern is with the question of the relation between an organism’s corporeal organization and the history of its ‘objectifications’, that is, how each organism, Homo sapiens included, makes worlds in its own bodily image. This historical-materialist inquiry into the ‘Human as Animal’ will therefore be developed in two parts. This essay will first outline historical materialism as a corporeal turn by situating it in relation to the mainstream of the Western philosophical tradition and to Darwin’s materialist conception of natural history. Then, through an elaboration of the concept of Vergegenständlichung/objectification, it will consider history as world-making – a labor common to all organisms, but certainly unique in Homo sapiens
Shell and Glass Beads from the Tombs of Kindoki, Mbanza Nsundi, Lower Congo
Get PDFThe ancient Kingdom of Kongo originated in Central Africa in the 14th century. In the 15th century, the Portuguese organized tight contacts with the Bakongo. From then on European goods gained new significance in the local culture and even found their way into funerary rites. Among the most important grave goods in the Kingdom of Kongo were shell and glass beads. They occur in many tombs and symbolize wealth, status, or femininity. At the burial site of Kindoki, linked with the former capital of Kongo's Nsundi province, a great number of shell and glass beads were found together with symbols of power in tombs attributed to the first half of the 19th century. Determining the origin of these beads and their use in the Kongo Kingdom leads to interesting insights into the social and economic organization of the old Bakongo society, their beliefs, and the symbolic meaning of the beads
The Humanity of Children from Sandmann to Struwwelpeter: A Tale of Two Hoffmanns
Get PDFWithin the context of an inquiry into the borders between human and animal, this essay considers the question of the humanity--or animality--of children as they are depicted in nineteenth-century German literature and elsewhere. Defining nineteenth-century literary "humanity" as a regulating, domesticating, bourgeoisification, I examine E.T.A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann and Heinrich Hoffmann's Der Struwwelpeter, and follow the sins of omission (Sandmann) and comission (Struwwelpeter) that seem to authorize the inhuman treatment of children. Nathanael, Coppelius's "little beast," is reduced both to beast and automaton/wooden doll and ultimately destroyed in E.T.A. Hoffmann's adult novella. Twenty-nine years later, the young protagonists of Heinrich Hoffmann's children's book suffer gruesome punishments for their willful transgression of bourgeois norms and domestic law. But the children's rhymes produced in 1845 have a revolutionary flavor that underscores the subject's freedom