Cars and Road Safety

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In modern days, society is entrusted with the responsibility of using one of the most accessible pieces of potentially dangerous pieces of machinery. With the rates of injuries and fatalities caused by vehicles continuously increasing, it has become the role of engineers to evaluate and improve the measures taken to prevent further damage. One major aspect of road safety is intersections, where the possibility of collisions is very high. 20% of all accidents occur within 100m intersections (K.W Ogden, 2001). The intersection that will be discussed in this report is the Broadwater Rd and Newnham Rd intersection at Wishart. This intersection is subjected to steep inclines and in some cases sight distance was largely hindered, resulting in a very unsafe intersection. Hence, to improve this intersection, speed limits have been proposed along with an appropriate duration of the orange light to prevent potential accidents. Three major concepts can be associated with analyzing intersection; firstly, the incline that the intersection is subjected to. According to Dr.Dan, the maximum grade permitted in Australia is 8%. The grade of Newnham Rd can be estimated as 5% since the road is steep at this intersection. Graphs 1 and 2 clearly show that the grade of a road has a significant impact on the stopping distance of vehicles at an intersection. As the grade of a road increases, its angle of inclination increases resulting in a larger value of mgSinθ. MgSinθ is component force of gravity parallel to the incline that works with the applied braking force in order to reduce the vehicle’s speed. Therefore, it can be deduced from Graph 1 that, when travelling up an incline, the stopping distance of a vehicle is inversely proportional to the steep... ... middle of paper ... ...ping distance of vehicles. Stopping distance comprises of recognition, reaction and braking, which are represented in Dr.Dan’s formula (Logbook). These components are dependent of various factors. For example, the driver relies on sight distance to be able to comprehend the intersection and recognize the reason to stop. Therefore, in this analysis, sight distance has been considered. Furthermore, reaction time depends on alertness, distraction, fatigue, alcohol intake of driver and the driver experience (D. Madden, 2007). For this reason, reaction times of 1 second and 1 and a half seconds were considered. These, times were also suggested by Dr.Dan. In doing so, the variables that have been changed include… The scenarios that will be explored in this report are: driving down Newnham Rd, driving across Broadwater Rd and driving onto Broadwater Rd from Newnham Rd.

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