Technical Sciences. Traffic

Stepanov Oleksiy

PhD in Technical Sciences, associate professor in KhNAHU, Ukraine

Safety of Motor Vehicles in the Transport System

The category of transport safety in scientific literature is considered in various aspects, and its concept has different meanings [5, 6]. It can be noted that safety of motor vehicles in the transport system is aimed at protecting passengers, owners, recipients and carriers of goods, owners and users of vehicles, transport complex and its employees, national economy and budget and environment from transport complex hazards [1, 2, 3, 6]. In the most general form the “motor vehicles safety” concept in the transport process can be defined as: system of prediction, prevention and suppression of crimes, including terrorism, in the transport sphere; system of prediction of extreme natural or self-inflicted events for motor vehicles; system of avoidance or minimization of material and moral damages resulting from crimes and incidents for motor vehicles; system aimed at increase of ecological safety of transportation process and environmental sustainability of the transport system; system of implementation of national security objectives in the road transport complex.

The systematic nature of the “motor vehicles safety” concept defines the necessity for a comprehensive, systematic solving of problems in this sphere. Large range of different natural, technical and social causes gives rise to a wide range of internal and external hazards that weaken the national transport safety.

It shall be noted that the system of authorities responsible for motor vehicles safety, in addition to legislative, executive and judiciary structures included in it, involves participation in the process of ensuring safety of vehicles and parties of transport safety ensuring activity within its competence, professionalism and abilities: special services; law enforcement system; non-state safety enterprises; authorities responsible for the safety of motor vehicles operating directly in the road agencies; public organizations, associated to some extent with transport problems as a whole and with the motor vehicles safety in particular.

It has been proven that due to size and mobility of motor vehicles, the problems of ensuring road traffic safety are most important. There is a tendency to rapid situation deterioration, which requires immediate response. The general part of the Transport strategy of Ukraine for the period up to 2020 specifies that “Transport is one of the basic spheres of the national economy, the effective functioning of which is essential to ensure defense capacity, protection of national economic interests and raising the standard of living. Today, the transport industry in general meets the requirements of national economy and population in transportation. However, the level of safety, quality and efficiency of transportation of passengers and freight, energy efficiency and environmental load does not meet modern requirements...” [2].

In this regard, road safety in many countries is an integral part of national policy, which includes implementation of normative legal acts and complex national programs. The majority of countries with developed motorization have less problems with road accidents and their severity than Ukraine. This is because the motor vehicles safety and road safety in these countries is the result of effective public policy included in implementation of programs aimed at reducing the road accident rate.

Literary sources [3, 5, 6] prove that often the cause of some road accidents is non-conformity of one of the elements of the subsystem “Driver – Car – Road” to other elements of this system [5]. Many road accidents arise because the requirements of traffic situation are beyond the capabilities of human body or motor vehicle design. The impact of additional loads, caused by the design defects of the car or its poor condition, on the driver can drastically reduce the quality of the driving and, in particularly unfavorable cases, lead to a road accident. In other words, the cause of any road accident can be defined as all the conditions and circumstances, elimination of which would not let this accident occur.

Transport processes safety is a property of transport processes to be safe or to have an acceptable level of safety for the participants of these processes, functional elements of motor vehicle safety, environment and population. The transport processes safety includes motor vehicle safety, communications safety and transport infrastructure safety.

Considering the motor vehicles safety issue, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts “motor vehicles safety” and “road safety”. In many languages, the same word – “safety” – is used to refer to both categories. Applied to the motor transport industry as a whole, these two terms have different interpretations.

In our opinion, the term “motor vehicles safety” shall mean the complex feature of structural and operational properties of motor vehicles, the reliability of which is determined by failure of any of its closely linked components, the safety level (a complex of measures preventing criminal activities: fraud, attacks on drivers and motor vehicles, thefts of freight and vehicles, terrorist attacks and so on), abnormal, geopathic factors and psycho-physiological condition of road users, determining their ability to transport passengers and freight without endangering health and safety of people, considering integrity of freight, motor vehicles and environment. The result of failure of motor vehicle safety is the road accident possibility.

The term “road safety” shall mean the safety level and the set of measures for prevention of road accidents, i.e. events occurring during the vehicle motion [3, 4, 7]. This becomes even more important with motor vehicles.

Considering the methods of assessment of motor vehicle safety in the transportation process, including analysis of systematic approach to solving security problems, we can conclude the existence of necessity to address motor vehicles as hierarchical multilevel systems with different internal structure of elements, level of efficiency and conflicting objectives of functioning and development. The basis of methods of safety of transport functioning shall be the theory of complex organizational and technical systems, which allows to obtain description of vehicles with the specified level of detail and to solve problems of prediction of development, safe transport functioning, construction of effective structures, analysis and optimization of transportation and information flows.

Measures to improve the motor vehicles safety and road safety in the transport process of a complex “Driver – Car – Road – Environment” (DCRE) system shall not be carried out in parallel or in isolation from each other. Management programs for advancement in these system spheres shall be developed conjointly in order to obtain mutual benefit – prevention of road accidents, considering obvious relations between them.

Thus, ensuring motor vehicles safety is one of the priority requirements for transport systems. Considering the problems of motor vehicles safety in the transport process, it is necessary to mention multiplicity of presentations of danger and necessity to confront, which has given rise to different interpretations. They formed the basis for creation of independent branches of knowledge, which reflected the specific use of measures to prevent emergence of risks in various spheres of human life and activities.

References:

1. Закон України «Про автомобільний транспорт». Відомості Верховної Ради України (ВВР), 2001, N 22, ст. 105 { В редакції Закону № 3492-IV від 23.02.2006, ВВР, 2006, № 32, ст. 273 } із змінами і доповненнями.

2. Про схвалення Транспортної стратегії України на період до 2020 року: Постанова Кабінету Міністрів України від 20 жовтня 2010 року № 2174 р.

3. Горев А. Э. Организация автомобильных перевозок и безопасность движения [Текст] / А. Э. Горев, Е. М. Олещенко. — М. : Издательский центр «Академия», 2006. — 256 с.

4. Правила дорожнього руху. Постанова Кабінету Міністрів України від 10 жовтня 2001 р. № 1306 із змінами.

5Скороходов Д. А. Проблемы безопасности транспорта / Д. А Скороходов, АЛ. Стариченков // Транспортная безопасность и технологии. №2(3), 2005г. С. 2427.

6. Сургачев И. Е. Транспортная безопасность / И. Е. Сургачев. ― 2007. ― 270 с.

7. Яхьяев Н. Я. Безопасность транспортных средств / Н.Я. Яхьяев. ― М.: Издательский центр «Академия», 2011. ― 432 с.