Identifying Future Vehicle Safety Priority Areas in Australia for the Light Vehicle Fleet

Abstract

Formulating priorities for future road safety strategies requires supporting analysis to predict what the future crash population will look like and to assess how the countermeasures either already in place or planned will address the crash problems forecast. This analysis aimed to identify future priority action areas for light vehicle safety by identifying crash types that will not be fully addressed in the future by projected improvements in active and passive safety in the Australian light vehicle fleet. The future crash profile was modelled from 2017 to 2030 using crash data from 5 Australian jurisdictions overlayed with available evidence on vehicle safety feature fitment and effectiveness. The methodology can be applied to larger sets of safety technologies when sufficient evidence and supporting crash data become available. Three future vehicle safety priority areas were identified from the analysis: (i) fatal pedestrian crashes, (ii) single vehicle frontal crashes with objects, and (iii) front-to-front vehicle crashes both at intersections and midblocks, and front-to-side impacts at intersections including straight crossing path and right turn across path crash types. These crash types were projected to be the largest contributors to fatalities by 2030. Projections showed that remaining crash types in 2030 will be poorly addressed by current vehicle safety technologies such as autonomous emergency braking, lane departure warning and electronic stability control. Future vehicle safety policy priorities should address these crash types through the development of additional or enhanced vehicle safety technologies and where vehicle safety technology proves inadequate other countermeasures such as road infrastructure treatments and appropriate speed limit setting for high risk environments that address the key crash types remaining in the system.

Road Trauma in Regional and Remote Australia and New Zealand in Preparedness for ADAS Technologies and Autonomous Vehicles

“…Australia and New Zealand have one of the oldest fleets within the OECD countries with average vehicle fleet ages of 10.1 years and 14.4 years, respectively [56, 71,107]. Further, given that the single most effective means of accelerating the uptake of vehicle safety technologies into a vehicle fleet is by reducing the average age of the vehicle fleet [50,71,108], it appears that Australasia has some time before the benefits of ADAS technologies and eventually, autonomous vehicles, can be realised on both urban and rural roads in the absence of special attention and investment.…”

“…Reductions of 25-40% in run-off road and head-on crashes (due to Lane Keep Assist) and reductions of 35-50% in same direction impacts (due to AEB and Forward Collision Warning) were predicted. Budd and colleagues estimated the potential of over fifteen active safety technologies to reduce the crash injury burden by analysing the 2006-2016 crash trends of the light vehicle fleet in five Australian states [50]. They predicted that assuming the latest crashes were used in each projected year (with only the penetration of vehicle safety technologies changing), by 2030, 207 fatal crashes, almost 3400 serious injury crashes, and approximately 8500 minor injury crashes would be prevented due to the additional penetration of active safety technologies alone.…”

“…Fatal crashes in urban Australia (i.e., major cities) and rural Australia (regional and remote areas) compared with urban roads (speed limit ≤ 70 km/h) and open roads (speed limit > 70 km/h) in New Zealand, Data 01/2016-12/2018. Australian Fatal Data from BITRE[117], accessed 14 January 2020 and New Zealand fatal data from NZ Transport Agency Crash Analysis System (CAS) data[50], accessed 14 January 2020.…”