1. INTRODUCTION
The land transport sector encompasses the commercial use of many different vehicles including lorries, light vans, taxis, buses, cars construction and agricultural machinery, emergency service vehicles, motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles. Road transport safety is an important issue in the land transport sector.
Driving mistakes made by heavy goods vehicle drivers may be more serious because of the weight, size, shape, manoeuvring abilities, braking abilities, etc., of the vehicle.
The main types of transport accidents are:
• Vehicle crashes
• People being struck or run over by moving vehicles (e.g. during REVERSING or coupling)
• People falling from vehicles
• People struck by objects falling from vehicles, or vehicles overturning.
The analysis of European Statistics on Accidents at Work (ESAW) data reveals that 29% of fatal accidents at work are due to loss of control of means of transport or handling equipment.
Thus, improper handling and loss of control over vehicles may cause a severe threat to both the driver and the pedestrians. Unexpected reverse motion of vehicles in gradients and mountain roads is one of that problems which may cause disastrous accidents. Eventhough a modern vehicle has modern equipments like parking assistance system, hand brake, etc., driver's aprosemia will cause serious damages.
The major objective of our project is to prevent these type of accidents with some simple and economical means. It has Ratchet and pawl as its major component.
A ratchet is nothing but a mechanical device that allows continuous linear or rotary motion in only one direction while preventing motion in the opposite direction. Ratchets are widely used in machinery and tools. With this equipment we can prevent the unwanted reverse motion of a vehicle during all situations.
A ratchet wheel is to be welded with the wheel rim of the automobile and the pawl arrangement is connected to the chassis. The driver has no control over this arrangement that it automatically got engaged with the ratchet while the vehicle is driving below certain speeds. When the reverse gear is actuated, the pawl get released from the ratchet thus allowing the reverse motion. This is our project description and due to cost considerations a small prototype describing this principle was done for this purpose.
1.1. OBJECTIVES
• To prevent the unexpected reverse motion of an automobile under gradients and mountain roads.
• To protect the heavyload vehicle drivers and fellow pedestrians from disastrous accidents occurring due to loss of control and improper handling of equipment.