Smart vehicles that can communicate with each other, road infrastructure and other road users, provide driver assistance and potentially automate some or all aspects of the driving task will be increasingly introduced on roads overseas and in Australia and New Zealand over the next few decades. These technologies, termed Cooperative Intelligent Transport systems (C-ITS) and Automated Driving (AD) are predicted to have a range of safety, mobility and environmental benefits. A range of projects are underway in the United States and Europe to assess the safety benefits of C-ITS and AD applications and forecast deployment timelines. However, there is little known about the estimated safety benefits of these applications in Australia and New Zealand or the expected timing for fleet uptake. This project aims to identify emerging C-ITS and automated driving applications and assess their potential safety benefits across a range of crash types and road scenarios and deployment timing for Australia and New Zealand, as well as identifying key issues that need to be addressed to support optimal deployment. The project has four stages: 1. Review relevant international research on the estimated safety benefits of emerging C-ITS and AD applications and predicted deployment timelines; 2. Consult with government and industry stakeholders to obtain their expert opinions on the provision, implementation, regulation and use of C-ITS and AVs in Australia and New Zealand as well as internationally; 3. Using in-depth and mass crash data, evaluate the potential safety benefits across time of selected C-ITS and AD applications in relation to a range of crash scenarios; and 4. Identify pertinent issues necessary to be addressed for the successful deployment of C-ITS and AD applications in Australia and New Zealand. This report commences with a review of the international research literature on emerging C-ITS and AD applications, with a focus on the estimated safety benefits of key applications across a range of crash types (where available). Also briefly reviewed are anticipated human factors issues or unintended consequences of C-ITS and AV technology (i.e. behavioural adaptation, driver trust, over-reliance, loss of vigilance and regaining manual control) and predicted timeframes for implementation, including the barriers to deployment. The review will largely concentrate on light vehicles as these are the focus of many of the major demonstration projects and constitute half of all serious trauma in Australia (Henley & Harrison, 2012); however, where available, C-ITS and AD applications will also be discussed for heavy vehicles and vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. The first section concludes with a discussion of the outcomes of the consultation with the C-ITS and AV research, industry and Government stakeholders. The second major component of this project was to estimate the benefits of a set of key technologies flagged with the potential to have significant benefits to serious road trauma in Australia and New Zealand. (Author/publisher)
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