Within the scientific monitoring of the field studies of long trucks in Germany traffic safety in the context of overtaking manoeuvres was under examination. Due to less case numbers in the first investigation a second investigation was necessary. Both studies only contain measurements and observations from the long truck itself. On the one hand, this is due to the small number of long trucks participating in the field study. On the other hand, there is also a lack of highway sections, which are accessible for long trucks, since long trucks are normally deployed on motorways. Within the study, the comportment of other vehicles towards long trucks in approaching, lane-changing and passing situations as well as during overtaking actions have been observed on highways as well as on motorways. The analysis of more than 543 vehicles overtaking long trucks (382) and articulated trucks (161) in step indicates no increased safety risk of overtaking long trucks even though both types of trucks consequently drove at the same speed. For part of the collective, save distances for overtaking manoeuvres have been fully established with radar- and videotechnique. The results show that the allocation for long trucks is superior to the reference trucks. Higher accelerations and shorter overtaking distances that one needs to cover are leading to the assumption that the ones overtaking are aware of the longer measurements of long trucks and react appropriately. On the one hand with a general no-passing zone for long trucks, the traditional articulated trucks have to pass more than one vehicle at the time. On the other hand the number of articulated trucks will decrease with an increasing number of long trucks although that won´t lead to a higher number of overtaking manoeuvres, which leads to the conclusion that the negative impacts of a general no-passing zone are higher than the intended positive impacts. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting