Stability control of heavy vehicles, In Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences

Accidents involving Heavy Vehicles (HV) have serious consequences for road users,and incidents induce major congestion or damage to the environment or the infrastructure. Statistics show that accidents involving such vehicles are more serious than light vehicles (LV). The mortality rate is twice in an accident involving a heavy vehicle (see table 1.1). While they constitute only 3% vehicles in traffic, HV represent10% of the vehicles involved in fatal accidents (13% of HV-related accidents aredeadly against 6% for LV, and 85% of deaths are not HV users). Several types of truck accidents can occur on the road. The most important risks involving HV are rollover (Roll instability), jackknifing (Yaw instability), lane departure (Transversal instability) and collision (Longitudinal instability). All these accidents are characterized by appropriate risks criteria. These are used in accident analysis and designing appropriate prevention systems (warning systems and active control). In this work, we focus on the criteria of rollover and lane departure, but the developed approaches can be generalized to other criteria and other types of accidents.