Vehicle Breakdowns Research Articles

WITHDRAWN: Design and development of vehicle breakdown assistance System: i-Touch

Abstract The main aim of the current work is to build a platform which provides an immediate local assistance during a vehicle breakdown. A connected environment accessible by both commuters and service providers, specific to a geographical region is designed and investigated. The platform is accessed through a connected cellular device. A dedicated hardware is attached to vehicle, to collect vehicles’ environmental parameters. The information collected along with the type of assistance required, is shared among the local service providers throught elemetry protocol. The real-time practicability of proposed solution is validated through a prototype model. The measured values have been compared with existing solutions in terms of parameters such as, total time required, mobile battery drain and tracked location accuracy. The difference between using a Representational State Transfer (REST) protocol and Telemetry protocol is also equated. The use of dedicated on-board device in comparison to software only solutions or integrated models are also compared. The additional potential areas in which the proposed solution finds applications is also descripted. The interoperability of the proposed system and its caliber to adapt new technologies is also discoursed.

Comparison of different Bayesian methods for estimating error bars with incident duration prediction

Traffic congestion which has been a common problem faced by almost all of the metropolitan cities across the world is caused by non-recurring traffic incidents such as accidents and vehicle breakdowns in many cases. Therefore, accurate prediction of the incident duration has become an essential part of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Although the data-driven deterministic regression models can serve this purpose, the performances of these models are subject to varying test conditions. In this study, we consider two different data-sets, one from Singapore and the other from the Netherlands, and explore stochastic models (Bayesian Support Vector Regression, i.e. BSVR and Gaussian Process, i.e. GP) that not only perform prediction but also provide error bars as confidence measures along with the predicted values. Moreover, we also verify whether these methods can anticipate when the predictions are unreliable. To this end, we analyze the specificity and sensitivity of the two methods for detecting prediction errors with different tolerance levels. We observe that for 70% specificity, the sensitivity of BSVR and GP is 67% and 78% respectively, for the incidents in Singapore. On the other hand, for the incidents in the Netherlands, the two methods have 55% and 60% sensitivity respectively, for the same level of specificity. Therefore, our proposed method of Bayesian models with error bars leads to more reliable predictions of the traffic incident duration, as well as forecasts to some extent when the predictions are unreliable.

Web Application for Automobile Services

A vehicle breakdown is the mechanical failure of a motor vehicle in such a way that the underlying problem prevents the vehicle from being operated at all, or impedes the vehicle's operation so much, that it is very difficult, nearly impossible, or dangerous to operate. Vehicle breakdowns have various causes. Depending on the nature of the problem, the vehicle may or may not need to be towed to an automobile repair shop. To aid such inconveniences building an application that facilitates the user to contact the nearby mechanic shops and choose the services required is an optimal solution. The workshop must be able to display their services and cost on their profile. Users must be able to register and login to cart the required services. The users must then be able to confirm the location, service time slot and complete the checkout process. In case, the services aren’t available the user must be able to view the nearby parking locations, towing options or book a cab.

Модель визначення часу подолання автомобілями зони транспортного затору

In this article, we propose a model for finding the time to overcome traffic jams by cars. It has been found that one of the causes of congestion is an obstacle, which can be caused by a traffic accident, vehicle breakdown, damage to the road and other causes. As a result, a traffic jam occurs immediately in front of the obstacle. Cars can cross this zone through the oncoming lane, passing oncoming traffic. The time of overcoming a traffic jam by a certain vehicle depends on many factors, in particular the distance to the epicenter of the traffic jam, the intensity of traffic flows in the forward and reverse directions. Depending on the specific values ​​of the intensity of traffic flows, the size of the congestion zone will vary differently. The model of a transport network is constructed and the basic parameters of process of movement of vehicles are described. A discrete model for forecasting the time of overcoming the traffic jam zone for cars moving in groups with certain intervals between them has been developed. A model for determining the time of overcoming traffic jams for any car entering the network by finding the correspondence of its position to the number in the queue of a particular group. A simulation model "Congestion" has been created, which determines the time of overcoming the traffic jam zone with the help of data on the intensities of traffic flows in both directions and the distance of the vehicle location to the immediate location of the obstacle. Thanks to these models, the driver of any vehicle entering the congestion zone will be able to determine the time for which he will pass this section of the transport network, and depending on its value, choose the fastest route.

Detecting anomalous road traffic conditions using VGG19 CNN Model

Detection on the real time road traffic has tremendous application possibilities in metropolitan road safety and traffic management. Due to the effect of numerous factors, for example: climate, viewpoints and road conditions in real-time traffic scene, Anomaly detection actually faces many difficulties. There are many reasons for vehicle accidents, for example: crashes, vehicle on flames and vehicle breakdowns, which exhibits distinctive and obscure behaviours. In this paper, we approached with a model to identify oddity in street traffic by monitoring the vehicle movement designs in two unmistakable yet associated modes which is 1. The vehicle’s dynamic mode and 2. The vehicle’s Static mode. The vehicle’s static mode investigation is gained using the background modelling after the detection of a vehicle, this strategy is useful to locate the unusual vehicle movement which keep still out and about. The dynamic mode vehicle examination is gained from identified and followed vehicle directions to locate the strange direction which is distorted from the predominant movement designs. The outcomes from the double mode investigations are at long last fused together by driven a distinguishing proof model to get the last peculiarity. For this research we are using traffic-net Dataset, VGG19 CNN model along with ImageNet weights and OpenCV.

Model of the Information System for Management of Logistics Processes in the Food Industry

The information management system for bakery serial production is presented. The object system is the technical means for the release and delivery of products to consumers, a range of products, a production plan (formed by the demand for products), a set of points of sale of products, and a graph of transport infrastructure. The capabilities of the warehouses of the system are limited, raw and other materials are perishable (storage periods are calculated in days), the number of delivery vehicles to the points of sale is small (<3), the needs of consumers are low (single demand for products), the number of points of sale is large (≈102), the shelf life is short (2-3 days). The controlled variable is the function U (t) - the ratio of the volume of weekly delivered product (taking into account the return of unsold products and volume of manufacturing defects) to the delivery cost. The control system is tasked with maintaining the maximum possible level of the function U. An algorithm for solving the problem of maximizing the function U is proposed, which consists in the following: 1) determine the maximum production plan, 2) determine the minimum delivery plan (monitoring the implementation of production and transportation plans gives feedback in the form of volumes of products that have not passed quality control Qb and have not been delivered to consumers QR), 3) feedback information is used to adjust production and transportation plans by applying man-machine decision-making procedures. To solve this problem, automation is required through the development and implementation of specialized software. A systematic approach to the development of information support involves the analysis of business processes of the enterprise. The critical processes to ensure the continued operation of the system are: "Supply of raw materials for production" and "Delivery of finished products to consumers". The task of ensuring timely replenishment of the warehouse is solved by the implementation of a supplier management system (SCM). The task of ensuring the delivery of finished products is solved by finding the optimal transportation plan. An adaptation of the algorithm for solving the problem of products transportation is presented. An algorithm for handling an emergency situation with the redistribution of cargo in the event of a vehicle breakdown during a voyage has been formalized.

Principle Guidelines for Safe Power Supply Systems Development

The relevance of safety applications within the automotive industry is increasing continuously, e.g. due to vehicle automation and decreasing relevance of mechanical backups. To cope with these trends, the power input of safety-related electrical and/or electronic systems needs to be ensured by the power supply system - leading to increased functional safety requirements. Compliance with ISO 26262 will be more in focus in the future. Currently, the compliance with ISO 26262 may be used to argue the state of the art focusing on product liability - however, it will become mandatory for homologation. Thereby, the power supply system is a crucial point since faults of the power supply system are currently the major contributor for vehicle breakdowns with increasing tendency. So far, there is no standard approach within the automotive industry how to ensure functional safety for power supply systems. To fill this gap, this technical elaboration evaluates functional safety with focus on power supply systems development. Hence, guidelines on how to apply the ISO 26262 are provided based on discussions within the automotive industry and research institutes. The focus is on the concept phase, i.e. item definition, hazard analysis and risk assessment, and the functional safety concept. The functional safety concept is based on a structured hierarchical breakdown to systematically derive safety requirements from the item level down to the power supply system level. The essential safety requirement - beside the safe power feed and safe power distribution - is to assure the freedom from interference between the safety and non-safety relevant components.

INVESTIGATION OF TRAFFIC COLLISIONS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF CAUSE AND EFFECT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VEHICLES BREAKDOWNS

Issues related to the investigation of traffic collisions in criminal proceedings and establishment of cause and effect relationship between vehicles breakdowns are considered. The purposes and tasks of the vehicle inspection by an investigator are defined. The procedure for the appointment of a technical condition examination in criminal proceedings during the investigation of a traffic collision is indicated. The issues that are resolved while road-accident analysis of vehicles technical condition are examined. The possible conclusions of the forensic examination after establishing the vehicle technical condition at the time of the accident are drawn and evaluation of these findings is given. Investigations and trials on criminal cases related to traffic collisions, as well as investigating authorities and court decisions on the issues of violations by drivers of the requirements of Traffic Rules, Technical Operation Rules, require the mandatory establishment of the systems technical condition that affect the safety of vehicles.
 Currently, police officers and investigators do not have a clear, scientifically substantiated methodology for checking the technical condition of vehicle systems, and the protocol form for examining and checking the technical condition of vehicles is imperfect. Many years of forensic examinations experience in forensic institutions of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and continuous work with these documents indicate that there was almost no case when an inspection report was filled in correctly and contained reasonable and comprehensive information on the technical condition of the vehicle involved in a traffic accident. In connection with the above, the consideration of the traffic accident investigation that arose as a result of a vehicle breakdown is becoming increasingly relevant. In addition, it is advisable to highlight the scientific and technological progress that entails the development of new methods for forensic experts who are involved in criminal proceedings during investigation of traffic collisions. The initiation of criminal proceedings on the fact of a traffic collision and the establishment of cause and effect relationships between vehicle breakdowns has a number of peculiarities inherent only to this corpus delicti, but application of special knowledge in the field of automotive equipment, namely, interaction of investigative actions with forensic experts allows the investigation to establish a cause and effect relationship between identified vehicle breakdowns and the occurrence of a traffic collision, and most importantly to identify that a person driving a vehicle violated Vehicle Operation Rules in the event of a traffic collision.

Vehicle Maintenance Contracting in Developing Economies: The Role of Social Enterprise

Problem definition: Difficulties in healthcare delivery in developing economies arise from poor road infrastructure of rural communities, where the bulk of the population resides. Although motorcycles are an effective means for delivering healthcare products, governments in developing economies lack expertise in proper maintenance, resulting in frequent vehicle breakdowns. Riders for Health, a nonprofit social enterprise (SE), has developed specialized capabilities that enable significant enhancements in vehicle maintenance. Riders for Health has engaged with the governments and provided its services using different contracting approaches. However, the effect of such practice on improving vehicle availability—the main social mission of Riders for Health—is not well understood. Academic/practical relevance: This paper presents one of the first rigorous analyses of how SEs achieve their goals through innovations in operations. Our analysis highlights the relationship between a social mission objective and a service contract choice, contrasting it with the choice by a profit-maximizing organization traditionally assumed in the service contracting literature in operations management. Methodology: We construct and analyze a stylized model that combines the elements of reliability theory and contract theory, explicitly accounting for the SE’s social mission in her objective function. Results: We find that the “total solution” approach of providing all aspects of vehicle maintenance, including fleet ownership, is a preferred choice for an SE that prioritizes improving vehicle availability; by contrast, an organization that focuses on profit maximization would find this approach less attractive. Moreover, we show that the total solution approach induces the SE to exert more efforts on failure prevention and repair lead time reduction in equilibrium. Our analysis also suggests that the SE could further improve vehicle availability by the total solution approach if it manages a large fleet that consists of vehicles with high resale values. Managerial implications: Our findings provide theoretical support for Riders for Health’s recent move toward the total solution approach as it expands its service into wider rural areas in many countries. The insights obtained from our analysis offer actionable guidelines to other SEs operating in developing economies.

Analysis of Vehicle Breakdown Frequency: A Case Study of New South Wales, Australia

Traffic incidents such as crashes, vehicle breakdowns, and hazards impact traffic speeds and induce congestion. Recognizing the factors that influence the frequency of these traffic incidents is helpful in proposing countermeasures. There have been several studies on evaluating crash frequencies. However, research on other incident types is sparse. The main objective of this research is to identify critical variables that affect the number of reported vehicle breakdowns. A traffic incident dataset covering 4.5 years (January 2012 to June 2016) in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) was arranged in a panel data format, consisting of monthly reported vehicle breakdowns in 28 SA4s (Statistical Area Level 4) in NSW. The impact of different independent variables on the number of breakdowns reported in each month–SA4 observation is captured using a random-effect negative binomial regression model. The results indicate that increases in population density, the number of registered vehicles, the number of public holidays, average temperature, the percentage of heavy vehicles, and percentage of white-collared jobs in an area increase the number of breakdowns. On the other hand, an increase in the percentage of unrestricted driving licenses and families with children, number of school holidays, and average rainfall decrease the breakdown frequency. The insights offered in this study contribute to a complete picture of the relevant factors that can be used by transport authorities, vehicle manufacturers, sellers, roadside assistance companies, and mechanics to better manage the impact of vehicle breakdowns.

The impact of biodiesel and alternative diesel fuel components on filter blocking through accelerated testing on a novel high pressure common rail non-firing rig

Increases in FAME content in diesel have coincided with advances in high pressure injector system technology. Previously, the unsaturation present in FAME has generally been thought to result in on-vehicle fuel degradation leading to solid formation. However, a growing number of vehicle breakdowns have implicated the increasing temperatures and pressures experienced by the fuel in the new injector system technologies. The majority of studies into diesel degradation are conducted under non-representative laboratory conditions, or extrapolated from the deposits found in filters from vehicles. In this study the cause of this degradation was investigated by using a novel High Pressure Common Rail (HPCR) non-firing rig, simulating realistic, albeit accelerated, conditions. The deposition on the system fuel filter was monitored, for B0, B10 and surrogate diesel components.Degradation was found to occur in the absence of FAME with both B10 and B0 fuels showing a similar rate of deposition. A study of synthetic surrogates demonstrated that, rather than FAME, any trace fuel component, under sufficiently high pressures and temperatures in the HPCR is prone to degradation. This suggests that rather than FAME being the sole factor in the increasing instability of diesel fuels, it is actually the increase in temperatures and pressures that the fuel is subjected to. This also demonstrates that while a large body of work on the oxidative instability of biodiesel in the chemical laboratory is indicative of instability, this does not mimic what is seen under more realistic vehicle conditions and the focus on FAME stability is misleading.

Playing bus in a bus – children transforming spaces within a mobile preschool into resources in place-making fantasy play

ABSTRACT In exploring children’s play in a mobile preschool this article aims, with an in-depth review of play situations, to show how children within collective fantasy play engage with spaces and experiences of the preschool bus. An ethnographic study with video observations was carried out in a Swedish mobile preschool, and a spatial dimension was added to a theoretical perspective on children’s interpretive reproduction in order to focus on how children create places in fantasy play. The analyses show how children in place-making processes innovatively connect and transform outdoor and indoor spaces into resources in play, and create diverse mutable play resources such as drills, a steering wheel and imaginary seatbelts. The results suggest that within collective fantasy play the children negotiate the meaning of issues about vehicles, such as the usage of seatbelts and vehicle breakdowns, and create imaginative extensive play-places – their own novel formations of place within the mobile preschool.

Traffic Signal Data for Emergency Vehicles using C-Means and SVM Classification

Traffic related troubles include not just traffic jamming due to increase in vehicular density, but also complexity for passage of emergency vehicles, violation of rules such as red signal jumps, vehicle breakdowns and accidents causing blockage of roads and loss of lives. Nowadays lot of people losing their lives due to delay of emergency vehicle service. By providing ambulance service timely and accurate can reduce the deaths. By avoiding the unnecessary time delay near traffic jams during an emergency situation. Clustering is a machine learning procedure that includes the gathering of targeted information which is a strategy for unsubstantiated learning and is a typical procedure for factual information investigation utilized in numerous fields. Fuzzy C-means logic is a technique for clustering which enables one bit of information to have a place with two or more clustering. The proposed Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm technique is often utilized calculation, to inspect the different types of information with the frequent data sets. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification method is obviously used classification model which classifies the data entirely however the size is in a common manner. In this paper, a set of datasets is implanted and the experimental clustering report is verified with the frequent parameters such as overlapping, data partitioning, high dimensional data and irrelevant data clustering. On comparing with existing clustering processes, this proposed approach shows the high efficiency than other clustering models with approximate effective results on the association rules.

Disruption Management for Dial-A-Ride Systems

Mobility on demand has been gaining more attention from the research community as a way to offer smart and efficient transportation services to people. Despite the advancements in vehicular technologies, vehicle breakdown (VB) remains one of the major contributors to the disruption of fleet operations, which may inflict large recovery costs and damage the service provider?s reputation. However, modeling such dynamic events for dial-a-ride (DAR) systems has not been addressed until now; this is the research gap we attempt to address in this article. The following are the contributions of our work: 1) the formulation of a disruptive DAR problem (DDARP) with VB (DDARP-VB), 2) a GPU-based adaptive large neighborhood search (G-ALNS) algorithm to solve the DDARP-VB, and 3) a fleet size minimization (FSM) strategy that leads to reduced operational costs under disruptions. From our simulations, the proposed G-ALNS algorithm performs up to 52 times faster than its CPU counterpart and produces better solutions when compared to the existing GPU approach for DARPs. Overall, our FSM strategy leads to a 59% reduction in fleet idle time under normal operations and a 15% reduction in operational cost under disruption.

Specifics of certification of agricultural tires with maximum consideration of their operating conditions

The problems of product quality and competitiveness are typical in the modern world. The international market constantly demands the improvement of the performance properties of automobiles, tractors, agricultural machinery and other types of mobile vehicles. At the same time, they can not be increased without significant improving of the tire performance characteristics. Pneumatic tires are among the critical units of mobile vehicles that have a significant impact on the following performance properties; therefore, as a complex product, they were included in the list of approval in accordance with Regulation No 106 for agricultural vehicles and their trailers. The purpose of the research was to develop recommendations for improving the methodology of conducting certification tests of agricultural tires aimed at improving product quality. The article discusses the methods of certification and approval of tires for agricultural vehicles and their trailers. The drawbacks of the method of certification of agricultural tires using the method of automobile ones are analyzed. It is proposed to supplement the certification with test methods developed in the Russian Federation that are as close as possible to the operating conditions of agricultural vehicles and tires of traction machines. The experience of work of “Bridgestone” and “Michelin” companies in the Russian Federation is presented. The absence of a national tire certification system in Russia influence in many cases vehicle breakdowns, which lead to downtime, as well as to the occurrence of accidents. In case of serious accidents in transport, when there is insufficient clarity of the causes of the accident or it is clear that the accident is related to tire failure, the victims initiate legal proceedings against the manufacturers, involving the payment of monetary compensation. At the same time, mass production defects are usually hidden behind the losses of consumers. To improve the quality of agricultural tires, it is proposed to revise UN/ECE Regulation No 106 as close as possible to operating conditions, as well as to create an independent accredited tire center.

Day-to-Day Evolution of Traffic Flow with Dynamic Rerouting in Degradable Transport Network

Random events like accidents and vehicle breakdown, degrade link capacities and lead to uncertain travel environment. And whether travelers adjust route or not depends on the utility difference (dynamic rerouting behavior) rather than a constant. Considering travelers’ risk-taking behavior in uncertain environment and dynamic rerouting behavior, a new day-to-day traffic assignment model is established. In the proposed model, an exponential-smoothing filter is adopted to describe travelers’ learning for uncertain travel time. The cumulative prospect theory is used to reflect route utility and its reference point is adaptive and set to be the minimal travel time under a certain on-time arrival probability. Rerouting probability is determined by the difference between expected utility and perceived utility of previously chosen route. Rerouting travelers choose new routes in a logit model while travelers who do not choose to reroute travel on their previous routes again. The proposed model’s several mathematical properties, including fixed point existence, uniqueness, and stability condition, are investigated through theoretical analyses. Numerical experiments are also conducted to validate the proposed heuristic stability condition, show the effects of four main parameters on dynamic natures of the system, and investigate the differences of the system based on expected utility theory and cumulative prospect theory and with static rerouting behavior and dynamic rerouting behavior.

Multi-depot vehicle routing problem with risk mitigation: Model and solution algorithm

In practice, the execution of plans with vehicle routing components is often subjected to external events since the transporting vehicles can be exposed to various risk factors. This may lead to delivery failure, vehicle breakdown, commodity loses, etc. In this setting, the stakeholders can benefit from logistic planning techniques whereby potential vehicle breakdown and cargo delivery failure can be mitigated by limiting vehicle risk exposure and prioritizing deliveries of larger payloads. In this paper, we propose a cost effective learning-based heuristic technique to minimize the routing cost along with the potential cost due to the risk of vehicle breakdown and cargo delivery failure. The approach is elaborated by means of an illustrative case study, and it is accompanied by benchmark results along with a comparative study. The heuristic solution generation approach can be used to mitigate vehicle routing risk at the planning stage as well as during various proactive and reactive plan adaptation activities in response to the occurrence of exogenous events.

Dynamic Prediction of the Incident Duration Using Adaptive Feature Set

Non-recurring incidents such as accidents and vehicle breakdowns are the leading causes of severe traffic congestions in large cities. Consequently, anticipating the duration of such events in advance can be highly useful in mitigating the resultant congestion. However, availability of partial information or ever-changing ground conditions makes the task of forecasting the duration particularly challenging. In this paper, we propose an adaptive ensemble model that can provide reasonable forecasts even when a limited amount of information is available and further improves the prediction accuracy as more information becomes available during the course of the incidents. Furthermore, we consider the scenarios where the historical incident reports may not always contain accurate information about the duration of the incidents. To mitigate this issue, we first quantify the effective duration of the incidents by looking for the change points in traffic state and then utilize this information to predict the duration of the incidents. We compare the prediction performance of different traditional regression methods, and the experimental results show that the Treebagger outperforms other methods. For the incidents with duration in the range of 36 – 200 min, the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) in predicting the duration is in the range of 25% – 55%. Moreover, for longer duration incidents (greater than 65 min), prediction improves significantly with time. For example, the MAPE value varies over time from 76% to 50% for incidents having a duration greater than 200 min. Finally, the overall MAPE value averaged over all incidents improves by 50% with elapsed time for prediction of reported as well as effective duration.

Optimal location of lane-changing warning point in a two-lane road considering different traffic flows

The timely lane-changing (LC) warning information should be informed to vehicles upstream when some things (such as accident or vehicle breakdown) happen. To avoid secondary accidents or reduce traffic congestion, this paper investigates the optimal LC warning point in a two-lane road considering the different traffic condition. The Intelligent Driver car-following Model and MOBIL LC model are used to describe the vehicle’s longitudinal and lateral motion rules, and methods based on probability theory and numerical simulations are proposed to investigate the optimal warning point under different traffic scenarios. The numerical results show that: i) the successful LC probability is not monotone changing with velocity. ii) providing LC warning information can reduce the average travel time, especially in moderate or congested traffic conditions. iii) the appropriate LC warning point location range becomes smaller with the increase of flow rate. iv) the effective LC warning​ point is about 30–300 meters far from the event point under different traffic flows.

A Literature Review on Freeway Traffic Incidents and Their Impact on Traffic Operations

Congestion on the freeway is more frequent due to several traffic incidents, namely traffic accidents, debris on the road, vehicle breakdown, and collision with guardrails than any other incidents. These, in turn, affect the operational performance of the freeway by increasing queue length, volume, and density. Consequently, effective freeway management strategies can help to minimize these impacts. The study investigates and summarizes existing studies to identify the reasons for and effects of the traffic incidents. Attention is given to the available solutions of the freeway traffic incidents management. The ultimate goal of this study is to identify the gaps which are not yet addressed to improve the operational effectiveness of the freeway. This study was conducted through a comprehensive literature review of existing refereed publications, established standards, and formal guidelines. Literature was sought through the Transport Research International Documentation (TRID) database, IEEE Transactions database, and google scholar search engine. Research focusing on freeway traffic incidents is a growing concern in transportation operations, as transportation network performance depends on it. Due to the advancement of technology, emerging vehicle technologies like connected vehicles have the potential to address these problems affecting the US transportation system and revolutionize mobility in the future. The study can serve as a reference for the researchers that are involved in freeway traffic operations.