Impact of a Non-Dedicated U-Turn on Traffic

Non-dedicated U turn has a direct effect on road safety, capacity and congestion during the traffic flow. U turn can have significant supremacy on traffic flow and headway. Therefore to study the impact of non-dedicated u turns on traffic is the ultimate requirement of the current time. This is a microscopic traffic study in which the data from a U turn (33°59’48.2"N 71°27’30.2"E) on road leading to Hayatabad and Karkhano in Peshawar is evaluated in terms of headway, speed and flow rate of traffic. Factual data is presented which shows that the average time headway surges when the traffic is interfered by the U turning vehicles. The probability density functions and cumulative density functions fit to the datasets of headway are then evaluated by the techniques of anova analysis to determine which distribution is the most suitable one for the data. Distribution data specific with the interfering U turn was taken in a separate set and evaluated. The result obtained show that the Burr Distribution and Generalized Extreme Value Distribution are the optimum to illustrate the headway data of traffic being interfered by U turning vehicles. This ligitimize the utilization of various time headway distributions of vehicles being interfered by U turning for traffic modeling.

Socio-Psychological and Linguistic Factors Involved in Intrasentential Code switching from Urdu to English

Socio-Psychological and Linguistic Factors Involved in Intrasentential Code switching from Urdu to English It is a common practice that while talking in Urdu we switch to English, a language which is considered highly prestigious as well as a sign of sophistication in our society. The current study aims at exploring the three different types of factors — socio-cultural, linguistic, and psychological — which trigger this switching at intrasentential level. The study is deductive in nature in that instead of setting out with already thought-out factors, data from the field is recorded and analyzed in order to find out the factors governing Urdu-English codeswitching. Hence, there is no predisposition or predetermination involved. The three categories of codeswitching factors covered in the thesis correspond to all the three factor-based environments under the influence of which codeswitching takes place, not only from Urdu to English but also in case of other languages. Thus: • Socio-cultural factors refer to the external environment influencing codeswitching. This environment is coloured by social conformity and compliance with mass-practices. In this environment, subjectivity is discouraged; rather banned. The environment may also be termed social environment. • Linguistic factors denote the inevitable factors which arise out of some lack or gap in conversation. We can thus say that these constitute conversation-internal- or simply conversational- factors. Social or mental pressures play no part over here; it is just a genuine linguistic need which triggers codeswitching. • Psychological factors address the mental bend of individual codeswitchers, which leads to codeswitching from Urdu to English. These factors thus correspond to mental environment. Subjectivity and individualism, in sharp contrast to the practice in the social environment, receive a highly conducive ambiance here. It is to emphasize that though the main categories of the codeswitching-factors, i.e. socio-cultural, linguistic, and psychological, are invariable across the languages coming into contact with each other, the factors mentioned under each vary from one language-contact situation to another, and that the current study focuses on exploring the factors specific to Urdu-English codeswitching, i.e. the factors obviously arising out of the indigenous social and linguistic situations.