ACCIDENTS INVOLVING LORRIES AND BUSES--AVOIDING THEM BY AUTOMATIC PREVENTION OF LOCKING. EVALUATION OF "INQUIRIES AT SITE OF ACCIDENT"

In the context of local road accident inquiries in a large city, it was of particular interest to see which vehicles were involved in the accidents and to what extent the accident was affected by the presence of an automatic locking preventer (ABS), such as has been used for some years on vehicles braked by compressed air. Only accidents (177) with commercial vehicles and buses braked by compressed air were considered. The environment in which the accident occurred with the individual groups of vehicles in the traffic (lorries, private cars, lorries with trailers, buses, motorcycles and bicycles, pedestrians) and the road behaviour, and the speed during the accident are first explained. Due to the results of the investigation, it was found that 7.1% of the accidents with ABS vehicles were avoidable. In 87% of them, there was damage to the lorry in the primary collision. 9.9% of the commercial vehicles also suffered secondary damage. Complete avoidability due to ABS systems could not be recorded for any pedestrian, motorcycle and bicycle accidents.