TRACTOR TRAILER ROLLOVER PREVENTION: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ELECTRONIC STABILITY CONTROL SYSTEMS

摘要

This paper estimates the effectiveness of electronic stability control systems (ESC), and rollstability control systems (RSC) in preventing heavy truck tractor-semitrailer rollover. Thestudy combines hardware-in-the-loop simulation with the analysis of independent crashdatasets using engineering and statistical techniques to estimate the probable safety benefitsof stability control technologies for 5-axle tractor-semitrailer vehicles. The conventionalapproach for assessing the safety benefits of vehicle technologies is to analyze crash datasetscontaining data on the safety performance of vehicles equipped with the technology ofinterest. Because the deployment of the stability technologies for large trucks is in itsinfancy, national crash databases do not yet have a sufficient amount of factual data that canbe directly linked to the performance of the technology. Therefore a novel method ofexamining the potential benefits of these systems was used. This paper focuses on un-trippedvehicle rollover in curves through the examination of crash scenarios that could likely benefitfrom the technologies and the probable effectiveness of each technology was estimated. Theanalysis in this study did not have the advantage of examining representative crash datasetsthat contain identifiable data from vehicles equipped with the technology. Therefore, theanalysis was based on probable outcome estimates derived from hardware-in-the-loopsimulation, field test experience, and expert panel assessment and these methods were used toestimate the safety benefits from the national crash data population.