Accident

Road traffic injuries are a neglected global pandemic. Up to 50 million people a year worldwide are injured or disabled in car accidents. The deleterious impact on the global economy is immense. Thousands of those injured die of opiate overdoses, trying to deal with chronic pain.

DRAG (from un modele de la Demande Routiere, des Accidents et leur Gravite) is a complex computer model that simulates accident propensities under detailed conditions. The DRAG approach constitutes the largest road accident modelling effort ever undertaken.

Three Mile Island burst into the nation’s headlines twenty-five years ago, forever changing our view of nuclear power. The dramatic accident held the world’s attention for an unsettling week in March 1979 as engineers struggled to understand what had happened and to bring the damaged reactor to a safe condition. Much has been written since then about TMI, but it is not easy to find up-to-date information that is both reliable and accessible to the non-scientific reader. TMI offers a much needed "one-stop" resource for a new generation of citizens, students, and policy makers.
The legacy of Three Mile Island has been far reaching. The worst nuclear accident in U.S. history marked a turning point in our policies, our perceptions, and our national identity. Those involved in the nuclear industry today study the scenario carefully and review the decontamination and recovery process. Risk management and the ability to rationally and understandably convey risks to the general population are an integral part of implementation of new technologies. Political, environmental, and energy decisions have been made with TMI as a factor, and while studies reveal little environmental damage from the accident, long term studies of health effects continue. TMI presents a balanced and factual account of the accident, the cleanup effort, and the many facets of its legacy twenty-five years later.
The authors bring extensive research and writing experience to this book. After the accident and the cleanup, a significant collection of videotapes, photographs, and reports were donated to the University Libraries at Penn State University. Bonnie Osif and Thomas Conkling are engineering librarians at Penn State who maintain a database of these materials, which they have made available to the general public through an award-winning website. Anthony Baratta is a nuclear engineer who worked with the decontamination and recovery project at TMI and is an expert in nuclear accidents. The book features unique photographs of the cleanup and helpful appendixes that enable readers to further investigate various aspects of the story.

Over the past 25 years, Harold and Darren Franck have investigated hundreds of accidents involving vehicles of almost every shape, size, and type imaginable.