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Safety

Hazardous and Large Goods Vehicles (HLGVs)

From a road safety perspective, road operators and authorities are particularly concerned about the risk posed by hazardous goods and large vehicles travelling across countries and using the roads under their management. If HLGVs are involved in a road accident, it can have severe consequences on not only the road users but also the environment and habitat around the incident – for instance, if they are carrying radioactive or flammable cargo. In SafeTRIP, the implications of HLGV movements were discussed with road operators in France (Sanef) and Spain (Acesa/Abertis).

Parking

HLGVs sometimes park on the hard shoulders (as shown in Figure 1), creating a serious safety hazard to the traffic. There is a growing trend for trucks to park on hard shoulders, especially at night, and at lunch time, near major cities.

A study conducted by Sanef has shown that drivers choose to park on the hard shoulder because of:

1. The need to stop due to regulations after a certain time

2. The lack of parking spaces

3. The concern regarding security of their vehicles and goods

4. The lack of information with regards to available parking spaces

Tracking

While in some EU countries, hazardous goods carriers are required to notify the authorities and road operators about their route for proper arrangements to be made at toll-gates or for patrol escorts to be organized, in many cases this does not happen.

This also allows the road operator to be on alert when the HLGV is crossing the network – anticipating potential issues in case of breakdown, spillage and involvement in road incident

Vehicle Information – Dimensions, Cargo, Wheel Types

In order to find a suitable parking space for an HLGV, some specific vehicle information are required. They are the following:

a. Size of vehicle – unlike cars, HLGVs can vary largely in dimensions (5-35m) and weight. Therefore, parking slots are not standard.

b. Cargo of vehicle – if the vehicle is carrying hazardous cargo, it needs to be parked in a safe zone in the parking area – away from coaches and other large vehicle with equally hazardous cargoes

Road operators and authorities provide assistance to HLGVs in case of breakdowns – in particular as their presence in the network can put other road users at risk – due to their cargo and size. According to road operators, most breakdown calls are related to punctured tires. As the tires are vastly different across HLGVs, if drivers do not know or provide the wrong information to emergency response, then transportation of wrong wheels to the incident or time for identification will lead to additional delays that impacts safety of the road users.

Emergency Call Service

Road operators have identified the need for emergency call functionality for the drivers of hazardous and large vehicles. This could be implemented to enable a driver to trigger an emergency call that would be routed to the relevant operation centre for the road operator who would then contact the relevant emergency services.

Figure 4: Current emergencies are reported by roadside phones if mobile phone signals are unavailable

Figure 3: Truck parked on hard shoulder

Patrol Vehicles

Tracking and activity status

When there is a road incident, the most appropriate patrol vehicle is sent to investigate and remedy the situation. In determining which vehicle to send, the following are considered:

1. the location of the patrol vehicle (how close it is to the event)

2. the current activity of the vehicle (if involved in an ongoing incident management on the road or on a break).

Along with the tracking of the patrol vehicles, automatic or semi-automatic determination of the vehicle activity status would be desirable.

Vehicles as Mobile Sensors

Road operators monitor the state of the road network. It is costly to install and maintain cameras and sensors along the entire network. In addition, cameras and sensors are subject to failures – especially under adverse weather conditions.

Individual vehicles along the network could provide valuable information about the state of traffic and the network – assisting in traffic management and traffic information. For instance, the positioning information could be used to determine traffic flow.  

Additional sensor measuring the temperature and a humidity and other data such as status of wipers, fog lights, use of sudden brakes could indicate conditions on the network. If statistically significant, aggregated sensor data from a number of vehicles could be used to generate alerts (such as fog alert, ice prevention) or infer the existence of a potential problem (in the case of sudden braking).

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SAFETRIP.eu is a project co-funded by the European Commission, DG Research

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