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Most of road accidents are caused by human factors. However, there are other factors involved in the occurrence of vehicular crashes, such as the physical condition of the road and vehicle itself. In order to increase road safety is essential to fully understand the interaction of those factors on vehicle's dynamic behavior, especially on heavy vehicles due to their greater mass, dimensions and potential damage that can provoke. This document presents information about the effect of some road surface irregularities on dynamic behavior of a three-axle heavy vehicle, based on a road with an ideally good condition (baseline). To do that, a numerical simulation model that includes both vehicle and road is used. It is able, at some degree, to simulate surface road conditions, such as potholes, friction coefficients at height levels of adjacent lanes.

The relationship between road geometric design and vehicles moving along it should be in a harmonic way in order to reduce the risk of accident occurrence. As a safety issue, the accident black spot analysis can lead to improvements in traffic signaling and/or to changes to the conflictive roadway section. This paper shows the applicability of the vehicle's dynamic behavior simulation as a complementary tool for evaluating geometrical modifications of roadway sections. A simplified example is described using a typical heavy vehicle, which follows a roadway section under two scenarios, one with an unchanged path and other with some modifications in order to increase safety. Results showed that vehicle's dynamic simulation can offer a detailed perspective of the vehicle's behavior to identify the effectiveness of the proposed changes before they are applied in the practice.