Tutorial – 2
1. A vehicle of weight 2.0-ton skids through a distance equal to 40 m before colliding with
another parked vehicle of weight 1.0 ton. After collision both the vehicle skid through a
distance equal to 12 m before stopping. Compute the initial speed of the moving vehicle.
Assume coefficient of friction as 0.5.
2. A truck of weight 2.0 T skids through a distance equal to 50 m before colliding with another
parked Minibus of weight 1.0 T. After collision both the vehicle skid through a distance
equal to 12 m before stopping. Compute the initial speed of the moving vehicle. Assume
coefficient of friction as 0.4.
3. Two vehicles A and B approaching at right angles, A from West and B from South, collide
with each other. After the collision, vehicle A skids in North direction 50o North of West
and vehicle B, 60o East of North. The initial skid distances of vehicle A and B are 38m and
20m respectively before collision. The skid distances after collision is 15m and 36m
respectively. If the weights of vehicles B and A are 6.0 T and 4.0 T, calculate the original
speeds of the vehicles. The average skid resistance of the pavement is found to be 0.55.
4. It is observed that on an average a vehicle driver drives 500 km during the course of a year.
The probability of having an accident is 100 per 200 million vehicles-kms. What is the
probability of a driver having at least two accidents during his driving career extending to
25 years?
5. The accident records for three consecutive years at an uncontrolled junction indicate the
number of accidents as 3, 6 and 9 in the year 1972, 1973 and 1974 A.D. respectively.
Calculate the probability of 4 accidents occurring per year at the site.
6. Following are the data collected in a spot speed studies carried out at certain stretch of a
highway. Determine i) 85th percentile and 15th percentile speeds for the regulation of mixed
traffic. ii) the 98th percentile design speed for checking the geometric design elements of
highway iii) the dispersion speed iv) the modal speed.
S.No. Speed Range No. of vehicles observed
1 0-10 15
2 10-20 20
3 20-30 45
4 30-40 89
5 40-50 200
6 50-60 275
7 60-70 120
8 70-80 45
9 80-90 30
10 90-100 10
7. Given that the speed in a certain section of a street follows a normal distribution with μ =
50kmph and σ = 10kmph, find the probability that speed in this section lies between
45kmph and 62kmph.
8. A certain traffic stream has a mean speed of 40 kmph and standard deviation of 2 kmph.
Assuming that speed follows a normal distribution, what percentage of vehicles in the
stream will have the speed exceeding 43 kmph?
Transportation Engineering II | Abhash Acharya 1
9. A roadway has an average hourly volume of 360 veh/h. Assuming that the arrival of vehicle
is Poisson distribution, estimate the probabilities having 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 or more vehicles
over a 20 secs interval. Plot the histogram of Poisson distribution for λ = 360 veh/h.
10. An officer commutes daily from his suburban home to his downtown office. On an average
the trip one way takes 24 minutes, with a standard deviation of 4 minutes. Assume the
distribution of trip-times to downtown to be normally distributed.
a. What is the probability that the trip will take atleast half an hour?
b. If the working hour starts at 9:00 AM and he leaves his house at 8:45 AM in the
morning, what percentage of the time he is late at work?
11. A traffic stream has a free flow speed of 90 kmph and a jam density of 80 veh/km. Estimate
the maximum flow per lane. Determine the density of traffic stream in a two-way four lane
road if the one-way flow in the road is 6400 veh/h in one direction.
12. Three vehicles are travelling a 1.5 km segment of a highway and the following observations
are made:
Vehicle A: 1.2 min
Vehicle B: 1.5 min
Vehicle C: 1.7 min
a. What is the average travel speed of the three vehicles?
b. What is the time mean speed and space mean speed of three vehicles?
13. An impatient car driver stuck behind a slow truck travelling at 32 kmph decides to overtake
the truck. The accelerating characteristics of the car is given by:
dv
= 2.0 – 0.05v
dt
Where, v is the speed in m/secs and t is the time in seconds.
a. What is the acceleration after 2, 3, 20 and 250 seconds?
b. What is the maximum speed attainable by the car?
c. When will the acceleration of the car approach zero?
d. How far will the car travel in 200 secs?
14. Derive the working expression for estimating speed at time t, acceleration at time t and
distance covered after time t by a vehicle given that the acceleration is related to speed by:
dv
= α - βv
dt
Transportation Engineering II | Abhash Acharya 2
