Flying without navigational aids – The case of commercial motorcyclists in Minna,Nigeria

The study investigated motorcycle operators in Minna city with a view to observing the riders’ signaling behavior and the presence or absence of navigational aids and their usage. The study was carried out in three stages. First, a 15 min rapid survey of 3135 motorcyclists was carried at both ends of three pre-selected busy roads with emphasis on observing the possession of navigational aids by the motorcyclists. Secondly, another set of study on signaling behavior was carried out in another three junctions within a 15 min period and finally an interview was conducted among 120 commercial and private motorcyclists from commercials and office parks for a more detailed study. The mean age and mean year of riding experience of the commercial motorcyclists were 28 (SD = 5.9) and 4 years (SD = 2.1) respectively compared to 32 (SD = 7.4) and 7 (SD = 7.4) years for private motorcyclists. The findings show that 18.1% of the motorcyclists had no trafficators and as high as 85.3% had no side mirrors. Of the 626 motorcyclists studied for signaling behavior, 574 (91.7%) failed to trafficate while turning at junctions. It was also found that 65 (54.2%) of the 120 motorcyclists interviewed had accidents with their motorcycles. Chi Squared test shows that effect of possession of side mirror on accident experience is not statistically significant (χ² = 2.11, p = .349) while possession of trafficators (χ² = 5.99, p = .050) and driving license (χ² = 12.603, p = .000) are statistically significant. The study revealed that 61.5% of motorcyclists that have trafficators had experienced accidents which points out the fact that riding behavior is more critical in road safety than having a perfect vehicle. The study recommends, among others, that the Federal Road Safety Corps and Vehicle Inspection Officers should be as strict with the motorcyclists as they are with the motorists in enforcing road safety.     

The Cognitive Relation in a Formal Setting

This paper proposes a formal framework for the cognitive relation understood as an ordered pair with the cognitive subject and object of cognition as its members. The cognitive subject is represented as consisting of a language, conequence relation and a stock of accepted theories, and the object as a model of those theories. This language allows a simple formulation of the realism/anti-realism controversy. In particular, Tarski’s undefinability theorem gives a philosophical argument for realism in epistemology. Special Issue Formal Epistemology II. Edited by Branden Fitelson     

Deontic logic and possible worlds semantics: A historical sketch

This paper describes and compares the first step in modern semantic theory for deontic logic which appeared in works of Stig Kanger, Jaakko Hintikka, Richard Montague and Saul Kripke in late 50s and early 60s. Moreover, some further developments as well as systematizations are also noted.