APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TO IMPROVE ROAD SAFETY

PROJECT
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
(ENGINEERING: CIVIL)

in the

Department of Civil Engineering

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Tshwane University of Technology

21 APRIL 2017

Prepared for: Prepared by:

Prof WK Kupolati, Room 3-516 Group name: M2 JCL ENGINEERS
Tel No: (012) 382 5227 Mboweni TL 211179082
E-Mail: [email protected] Ubisi J 212072320
Thoka CL 212219703
Mokgokong M 206171308
Khwinana A L 210013148
 Course B-Tech civil engineering
Assignment title APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TO IMPROVEROAD
SAFETY
ASSIGNMENT 04 – OVERVIEW OF INSTRUCTIONAL STUDIES IN CONTEXT

1. I know that plagiarism means taking and using the ideas, writings, works or
inventions of another as if they were ones own. I know that plagiarism not only
includes verbatim copying, but also the extensive use of another person’s idea without
proper acknowledgement. I know that plagiarism covers this sort of use of material
found in textual sources and from the internet.
2. I acknowledge and understand that plagiarism is wrong.
3. This assignment is my groups own unique group project. I acknowledge that copying
someone else’s assignment/project, or part of it is wrong.
4. For this project, I have not allowed, nor will in the future allow, anyone to copy my
work with the intention of passing it off as their own work.
5. I give my permission for the assessor of this work to make use of text matching
software to check my work for plagiarism.

Student no Name signature

211179082 Mboweni TL
212072320 Ubisi J
212219703 Thoka CL
206171308 Mokgokong M
210013148 Khwinana A L
 TABLE OF CONTENT

Page no
I. ABSTRACT
1. INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT 2

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF A STUDY

2. MODEL DEVELOPMENT 2

2.1. METHODOLOGY 2-3

2.2. RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION 4
2.3. DEVELOPMENT OF MOBILE APPLICATION 5-6

3. CONCLUSIONS 6
4. REFERENCES 7
5. ANNEXURES 8-9
 Abstract
On average four people die and 50 people are seriously injured on Limpopo roads every day.
Most of the people in Limpopo province have been personally affected by the trauma of the
road accidents.

While there has been a measurable decrease in death on Limpopo roads over the past
decades, there has been slower national progress in reducing the number of serious injuries.
Our roads safety strategy aims to set out a path for Limpopo province action and then
national action on reducing fatal and serious injury crashes on South African roads. It
coincides with the international decades of action for roads safety.

With this strategy our governments make commitments and take responsibility for critical
issues in the system. However, government can only do so much and we need the support of
organisations industry, businesses, community groups and individuals. with your help we can
move towards eliminating death and serious injury on our roads.

1. Introduction

According to M Rieker (6:2005) 1.2 million people are killed globally and 50 million are
seriously injured as a result of road traffic accidents every day. The roads accident cost
approximately 1-3% of a country annual GNP. No country can afford to lose these resources,
most importantly the developing economies like South African.

According to M Rieker (7:2005) the death and injury scale in South Africa due to road
crashes is disastrous and the country has been ranked fourth worst in the world.

The report is compiled in order to summaries the road safety problems and introduces the
new technology to improve road safety and bring solution to the problem. The introduction of
new technology is to reduce the death and the injuries that happening in our roads by 40
percent. The road safety solutions do exist and we have a moral obligation to make every
effort to apply them. The main challenge that we will face is to bring a change in road user
behaviour, road users should learn to consider the road as a shared public space rather than as
an area given over to drive on. (A. du Toit & E.Mbatha (8:2013))

1
The new strategy and technology that we are going to focus on, it will be mainly based on
the model/device that will be installed in every light vehicles and heavy vehicles that are road
worthy. The technology will reduce the attitude on the road and the bad behaviour.

1.1. Problem statement

During the festive seasons Limpopo province is experiencing high rate of motor vehicles
accidents. The accidents are mainly caused by the following factors:

 Driver’s negligence,
 Drunk driving,
 Fatigue,
 Bad attitude of drivers on the roads,
 Vehicles that are not roadworthy,
 Bad road conditions.
1.2. Objectives of the study

The main objective of the study is to gather all the necessary Transportation Technology
related information that will help in the development of an application. The application is
aimed at improving safety on the roads. The specific aims of the study are to:

 Use Transportation Technology aspects to identify the causes of the accidents on the
roads.
 Define strategy options of Transportation Technology for the development of an
application.
 Provide estimates on the availability of heavy traffic on the roads.

2. Model development
2.1. Methodology

The N1 route to Polokwane is long. The terrain is hilly, has wavy forms and incised by
several shallow drainage courses. Due to that, lot of information was required in the process
of creating a model for the project. Some symbols and functions are going to be used in some
of the calculations, and the following are the methods used to develop a model.

2
  For this study the following approach was adopted. Firstly, relevant literatures, public
survey and studies were reviewed in order to get in-depth information.
 Necessary calculations were conducted and data sheets were created and all combined
in an attempt to develop an application.
 The methods and principles used when preparing for this project were in accordance
with the Transportation Technology notes and supplementary notes, as they provide a
wide range of national and international standards for Transportation Technology.
 Furthermore some of the methods and information are according to the transportation
engineering literatures with an inclusion of Introduction to Transportation
Engineering, by JH Banks.
 Also the application of computer skills was practiced in the process of creating
spreadsheets and data sheets for the application development.
 Excel functions such as AND, IF, OR, are mostly used in formulas and calculations
for this project.
 Excel VBA is to be used for the countdown timer that controls the speedometer and
other functions such as driving hours, following distance etc.

Apart from the above mentioned methods, it was also decided that every vehicle driving on
the roads must be equipped with a fire extinguisher.

3
Figure 1: N1 route

2.2. Results and Interpretation of results

The information obtained is based on the collected information about the road and safety on
the N1 facility between Gauteng and Limpopo. With all the collected information,
calculations were performed and a spreadsheet was created in an attempt to develop an
application to be used to improve safety on the route. Below are the results and how they
work:

 Data was collected from the N1 road from Gauteng to Limpopo province.
 Distance of the N1 route in between the two provinces.
 The number and the width of lanes and shoulders on the National route.
 The quantity of users of the facility during normal and busy periods were also
collected
 With the combination of both the information and calculations we were able to create
an excel spreadsheet.
 The spreadsheet used a lot of excel functions such as IF, AND, OR etc. and some of
Transportation technology and Transportation Engineering formulas and equations.
 In creating the spreadsheet, three parameters were used i.e. Speed, Driving hours and
Following distance.
 If speed exceeds 120km/h, warning will popup and instruct the driver to slow down.
 If the driver is been driving for more than 8 hours, a warning will show and the driver
will be instructed to rest.
 The “Following distance” is represented by a colour and a distance limit. The colour
“green” will remain as long as the vehicle following distance is greater than 6m, and
the warning will show to the driver that the vehicle is “Too close”

The figure below shows the data, created excel speedometer and all the parameters discussed
above:

4
 Speedometer data Series level
Start 0 0
Red-Low range 10 10
Red-High range 10 20 60
45 75
Yellow-Low range 10 30
30 86
yellow-Middle range 15 45 90
20
Yellow-High range 15 60
Green-Low range 15 75 10 100
0
Green-Middle range 15 90
Green-High range 10 100
Blank area 100

Pointer data
Value 86
Niddle 2
End 112

Start Timer Stop Timer

Speed 86 Red
Fatigue 86 Red
Following distance 86 Green

Figure 2: Excel data and speedometer table

2.3. Development of mobile application

With the gathered information and some of the mathematical principles, computer skills,
Microsoft office, Transportation Engineering and Transportation Technology skills were
applied to create a mobile application to improve safety in our roads. With all the attempted
methods we tried, they were limited to produce the procedure of how the application is going
to work. The following steps explain how the procedure in developing an application is going
to work according to Kinvey (2016) on an Android or IOS app.

1. Data storage – the building block of any native app’s backend

2. User management – creating user account, managing authentication security and
access control.
3. Server side logic – how a developer truly customizes the user’s experience.
4. Data integration – allowing users to access information from and publish data to third
party sources, including social networks.
5. Push – managing engagement with users continuously.
6. Versioning – make version2 live, without breaking version1.
7. Caching – storing data locally to speed load time.
8. Synchronisation – enable-offline usage and resolve data conflicts.

5
 9. Wire-framing – blueprint for use interface and experience.
10. UI design – pixel perfect mock-ups of user interface.
11. UI development – translating mocks-ups into functioning user interfaces code.
12. UI polish – the differentiating “last mile” of the user interface, where an application
truly stands out from the crowd.
3. Conclusion

At the submission of the report, the development of a mobile application to improve road
safety was not as yet completed as all the work was in a procedural state. But this is an
important invention as it is planned into benefiting and elevating the life of lot of people who
are utilising the road facilities.

The invention as it not intendent to benefiting only the bus service users, but to also expand
our knowledge in Transportation Technology and also in solving Civil Engineering
challenges. With that said, the submission of the report is not going to limit us from doing
some further research on how can the development of a mobile application be carried out to
be a success, this will benefit us in accumulating a lot of knowledge in this course and also
help us understand the principles and concepts of Transportation Technology.

6
4. References

Google maps. 2017. maps. Images. [ A c c e s s e d : 0 7 / 0 4 / 2 0 1 7 ] .

GOOGLE MAPS. Available from: http://maps.google.com/ [Accessed: 05/10/2016].

KINVEY. 2016. how long does it take to build a mobile app [online]. Available from:
http://www. kinvey.com/how-long-to-build-an-app-infographic/. [Accessed: 08/10/2016]

Rieker, M.I., ‘Selling Safety – Marketing Road Safety in South Africa’, paper presented at
Fourth International Entertainment education conference, Cape Town, 2004.

Du Toit A and Mbatha E. The assessment of road safety measures and strategies required to
address accidents and fatalities with Gauteng, march 2013.

Banks J.H. Introduction to transportation engineering,2nd Edition, McGraw-Hill,

International edition,2004.

7
5. Annexures

Speedometer data Series level

Start 0 0 Start Timer
Red-Low range 10 10
Red-High range 10 20
Yellow-Low range 10 30
yellow-Middle range 15 45
Yellow-High range 15 60
Green-Low range 15 75 Stop Timer
Green-Middle range 15 90
Green-High range 10 100
Blank area 100

Pointer data
Value 0
Niddle 2
End 198

Limits Warnings
Speed 0 Green
Driving Hours 0 Green
Following distance 0 Too Close!

45 60
75
30
20 90
10 100
0 0

8
Picture 1: Excel model

Picture 2: N1, between Polokwane and Pretoria