No abstract

A commercial vehicle is the backbone of the logistics industry which drives a vibrant economy of a country. Nevertheless, commercial or heavy vehicle-related accident is drawing serious attention. The height, weight and width dimension of the commercial vehicles reduce the visibility of other drivers and thereby increase the risk of an accident. Furthermore, due to the evolution of technology, larger trucks are now equipped with higher horsepower where a lot of speeding-related accidents were reported. This study is set to evaluate the speed profile for different types of commercial vehicles at different road hierarchy. The results indicate that in general most of the heavy vehicles (4.39%-98.61%) travelled fast and did not comply with the speed limits posted on different types of road hierarchy. The lower the posted speed limit the higher the percentage of non-compliance rates which means that the compliance increase as the speed limit increase. The majority of the commercial vehicles (28%-57%) occupied the middle lanes and those smaller sizes of vehicles (as compared to other sizes of commercial vehicles) had more tendencies to travel on the fast lane.

Background Little is known about the prevalence and factors influencing red light running in Malaysia and the relation to the growing number of intersection related crashes. Objective To examine the prevalence and identify the factors associated with red light running at selected intersections in Malaysia. Methods Four intersections with high rate of accidents were selected as observation sites. Observations were conducted during peak hour (7:00–21:00) and off-peak (14:00–16:00) on a randomly selected day of the week excluding the weekends. Traffic volumes, traffic light violations, type of vehicles, time of day and cycle length of the traffic light were recorded. Results In total, out of 5090 vehicles observed, 12.04% (n=613) violated the red light. It was found that drivers facing short cycle length (less than 120 s) were more likely to run red lights. Intersections with fixed-timed traffic lights recorded 1.5 times more cases of red light running compared to intersections with vehicle-actuated traffic lights. Motorcyclists were 4.32 times more likely to run the red light compared to other drivers. No significant differences were observed in the number of red light running during peak hour and off-peak. Conclusion It was found that red light running were significantly related to the cycle length (p<0.05), types of traffic light (p<0.01) and types of vehicle (p<0.01). This study suggests the implementation of suitable engineering countermeasures and automated enforcement to reduce the number of red light running in Malaysia.

No abstract