Improvement of Road Safety through Appropriate Cargo Securing Using Outliers
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors of the paper present the results of evaluation a transportation experiment intending to improve road safety by analyzing transport shocks (inertia forces on to cargo) that significantly affect the system of securing the load, vehicle, driver and other aspects. This paper aims to answer the research question of whether the securing system on 90 the Tatra 815-7 vehicle corresponds to the expectations of the EN 12195-1:2010 norm. Methods of statistical comparison were used during data analysis. The probability distribution of acceleration coefficients was modelled using a contaminated log-normal distribution.
The subject of the paper is interesting and worth investigating but there are doubts about the road and traffic conditions for the experiment. Were the traffic conditions along the route of the vehicle's journey analysed (What was the volume of the traffic? Were there local traffic disturbances causing the necessity of sudden changes in the vehicle's speed? Could there be an influence of the road geometry, e.g. vertical and horizontal curves, road inclinations on the outcome data? Was there any research to identify the unevenness of the road pavement?). The factors described above may influence the results of the tests and should be commented on.
Author Response
Report 1 – Revision, comments:
The experiment, road and traffic conditions were specified in more detail (red text, part 3.1, conclusion). There is an explanation of the conditions in statistic part (red text, part 4.) as well.
The text has been proofread.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
With this manuscript the authors propose an alternative point of view on road safety, because it gives a valid contribution at state of the art about this issue.
Some comments:
- Introduction:
- The objective of the manuscript has to be explained better, particularly how the results contribute to decrease the number of road accidents.
- The authors have to analyze how the measures for loading trucks can improve the road safety policies (at national or regional level).
- Literature rieview.
- This paragraph is too short and little depth. The authors have to analyse in detail the literature proposed, specifing what is the contribution provided by each proposed article.
- Material and Methods.
- Transport experiment. A very important element has not been considered for trasport experiment: infact the authors don’t give any information about trucks’ drivers and, above all, about their drinving experience and driving ability, because it influeces the load position inside the truck during th journey. Please insert this part.
- Methods. Nothing to report
- Results.
- The authors propose a detailed analysis on the acceleration coefficient values recorded in three axes and in four vehicle corners. They propose a structured non parametric analysis and then a density distribution. The analysis is quite deep but two elemente are missed:
- For outliers or for data out of range, there are no elements related to driving conditions as curve of the road, pavement conditions, traffic, sudden braking, ect.
- The vibration spectra of each accelerometers are missed. The authors have not to present the whole graph but only the most significative parts, where acceleration coefficient values are present as abnormal. Then, each abnormal point has to be related with the cause of this anomaly.
- Discussion.
- This section is not scructured as discussion but as conclusion. The authors have collected the elements of discussion insiede the Results section.
Please change the title from Discussion to Conclusion.
Please update the Conclusion with the elements suggested before regarding the relationship between acceleration coefficient values and driving condition
Author Response
Report 2 – Revision, comments:
More detail information about goal and impact on road safety policy was added to the Introduction (red text).
Literature review part was extended and added by contribution of the key papers and monographs (red text).
Transport experiment was better explained and some more details about conditions and driver were added (red text).
To Results part (4.2) was added new paragraph (green text), as well as to part 3.1 (green text). Outliers were evaluated statistically by estimated contamined distribution and the characteristics of this contamined distribution (see the new table in part 4.2). Based on the model the percentage of contaminated values and their characteristics (expectations a standard deviation) were determined and emphasized, for which location of the cargo it is necessary to pay increased attention to its fastening. This proportion of contaminated distribution reflects the influence of required elements related to driving conditions as curve of the road, pavement conditions, traffic, sudden braking, ect.
Vibration spectra were calculated, but due to the fact that the extreme peaks were generally not statistically significant, their statistical analysis was not included in the paper. A typical example of a spectrum is included for illustration only here (see the yellow annex to the article, it is not part of the article, but it wasn´t able to insert particular graphs to this author´s notes to reviewer).
„Discussion“ part was replaced by „Conclusion“. Some more details from results were added (red text).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors of the article have included answers to the concerns I identified in the review.
Reviewer 2 Report
All new elements introduced by the authors are positive and allow to the manuscript to be published.
