Many traffic accidents are due to an incorrect assessment of the current situation by the driver of the vehicle. With correct assessment of the situation, the driver has also to take into account a number of other factors. This article focuses on some of these factors such as the vehicle load, vehicle speed and curve radius. The first part of the article deals with the position of the vehicle center of gravity (CG), which has a major impact on the driving characteritics of the vehicle. The paper demonstrates the calculation of the maximum speed of a car model and truck model (without load and with load) when cornering. The center of gravity has an effect on the vehicle axles load distribution, and thereby on braking forces. This issue is dealt with in the second part of the paper. In the last part the calculation of the braking force as a function of the adhesion coefficient of the tires depending on the road surface is mentioned. The importance of the contribution consists in quantifying the impact of vehicle load on its driving characteristics.

No abstract

Summary. This article focuses on the comparison of the amount of emissions produced by vehicles with a combustion engine and electric cars. The comparison, which is based on the LCA factor results, indicates that an electric car produces more emissions than a vehicle with combustion engine. The implementation of electric cars will lead to an increase in the production of greenhouse gases.

No abstract

Road transport is an essential part of modern life. It brings with itself, besides the desired effects, negative aspects as well. Negative aspect is not only the emissions production but also the traffic accidents occurrence even with tragic consequences. In proportion to traffic intensity, accidents during decreased visibility represent a significant share. A driver has a limited source of information at this time, since only vehicle headlights illuminate the runway and its surroundings. However, these do not only illuminate the roadway ahead of the vehicle, but part of the emitted light also falls into the drivers’ eyes of vehicles in the opposite direction. Thus, the eyes of such glared drivers worse recognize details, or lose the ability to see at all, i.e. vision ability. The level of vision loss depends on the light intensity that falls into the drivers’ eyes in the opposite direction. This light intensity is related not only to the correct headlights alignment (setting) but also to their design. In this paper, three generations of headlights in terms of the light intensity falling into the driver’s eyes of the vehicle in the opposite direction are compared. The headlights alignment of the examined vehicles was checked prior to measurements in accordance with the manufacturer's requirements. Given the fact that intensity of the emitted light is also related to the age of the used source, they have been replaced by the new ones. For the reason of objectivity, examination was performed at night at the New Moon phase, thus it did not light up. The starlight also did not affect the measurement results because it was cloudy, but it did not rain. There were no artificial sources of light near the measuring point..