Identification of the Mechanical Failure Factors with Potential Influencing Road Accidents in Ecuador

Juan Pablo Montero-Salgado, Jose Muñoz-Sanz, Blanca Arenas-Ramírez and Cristina Alén-Cordero
Additional contact information
Juan Pablo Montero-Salgado: Machine Engineering Division, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales (ETSII-UPM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), 28006 Madrid, Spain
Jose Muñoz-Sanz: Machine Engineering Division, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales (ETSII-UPM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), 28006 Madrid, Spain
Blanca Arenas-Ramírez: University Institute for Automobile Research Francisco Aparicio Izquierdo (INSIA-UPM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), 28006 Madrid, Spain
Cristina Alén-Cordero: Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), 28871 Alcala de Henares, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 13, 1-27

Abstract: Road traffic accidents result in injury or even death of passengers. One potential cause of these accidents is mechanical failures due to a lack of vehicle maintenance. In the quest to identify these mechanical failures, this paper aims to set up the procedure to identify the mechanical failures that contribute to traffic accidents in cities located in developing countries, including the city of Cuenca-Ecuador. For present research, a database provided by the entity responsible for the Vehicle Technical Inspection, the Empresa Pública Municipal de Movilidad, Tránsito y Transporte and for the ones responsible of managing traffic accident data, Oficina de Investigación de Accidentes de Tránsito and Sección de Investigación de Accidentes de Tránsito was used. The vehicle subcategories M1 and M3 (bus type) and N1, so named according to Ecuadorian technical standards, were considered the most relevant regarding accident rates. The database was analysed with descriptive statistics, a Pareto chart and time series with the quadratic trend. From this analysis, the most significant failures found in the VTI in all three subcategories were the alignment of the driver headlight, both horizontal and vertical, braking imbalance on the 2nd axle, insufficient tire tread and parking brake effectiveness. All these failures showed a decreasing trend over time and in the forecast at a maximum of two to three years. The most relevant causes of road accidents recorded during the period 2009–2018 related to mechanical failures were the braking system (65.5%) and the steering system (17.2%) for subcategory M1.

Keywords: Vehicle Technical Inspection; road safety; road crashes; mechanical failures; maintenance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/13/7787/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/13/7787/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:13:p:7787-:d:847320

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().