Telematics Applications, an Important Basis for Improving the Road Safety

Abstract

An accompanying sign of development in Slovakia, as in the developed countries, is intensification of traffic which manifests itself not only as a contribution to mobility, but also with its negative impacts on the environment, increasingly worse throughput of road infrastructure, increase of number of traffic accidents and road traffic inefficiency. Currently, the EU major challenge is to increase the road safety. Safety is the relevance from accidents and losses of human lives. It also deals with property protection, regulation, management and transport technology development. The analysis of accidents indicates that 95 % of transport accidents are caused by human factor failure (wrong determination of situation, participant’s skills/abilities etc.) One of the most frequent errors of drivers is a wrong decision in a critical situation. The decision process is very complicated since the driver has to evaluate the arisen situation correctly within fractions of a second. The implementation of telematics systems into vehicle equipment reduces the energetic intensity, reduces environmental impacts, increases safety etc. Reduction of total operating costs of road vehicles, simplification of vehicle control to maximum extent and reduction of driver’s informational overload is largely stressed. In this paper we evaluate traffic accidents in the EU and the possibilities to increase road safety in Slovakia and Poland. In conclusion, we identify possibilities to reduce the accident rate by means of telematics applications, which constitute an important part of transport issues and aim at safer and more efficient transport with less congestion, lower economic burden on the environment and higher safety.