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ITS Australia Summit 2023

Evaluation of the potential road safety benefits of semi- and fully-automated vehicles in Victoria

Abstract

Talk Description

Institution: Monash University - Victoria, Australia

Road traffic injuries are the eighth leading cause of death globally. Over the past five years, an average of 236 people were killed on Victorian roads annually, reflecting substantial reductions achieved over the last 50 years. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Vehicle (AV) technologies have the potential to further improve vehicle safety. The magnitude of this impact is yet to be rigorously estimated. This research presents a recently developed simulation model that quantifies future reductions in fatal and serious injuries (FSI) on Victorian roads from the adoption of semi- and fully automated light vehicles under a range of take-up scenarios until the year 2050. The pilot model tested the introduction of Highway Drive Pilot (HDP), a Level 3 system which automates speed control, following and lane-keeping. The take-up of HDP was assumed to follow an S-curve starting from 2026 to 97% adoption among the light vehicle fleet by 2037. The Operational Design Domain (ODD) of HDP and applicable crash types were identified based on publicly-available data from vehicle manufacturers. The relevant pool of FSI was extracted from police-reported Victorian crash data from 2017 to 2019. Using scenarios involving a mix of HDP-equipped and conventional vehicles, the overall effectiveness of HDP was estimated to be 78.3% (95% C.I. 74.0-82.6%). Under these assumptions, HDP was predicted to prevent 47 FSI (95% C.I. 44-49) annually by 2050 with a cumulative 496 FSI (95% C.I. 468-523) prevented over the simulation period. Future work will involve refining various aspects of the model to improve its accuracy and applying the model to evaluate effectiveness of higher AV technologies across various ODDs.


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