Advanced driver assist systems are being promoted with the expectation that enhanced driver support will mitigate road trauma. While these technologies are optimised for certain road and traffic conditions, not all roads across Australasia are equipped with ADAS-supportive infrastructure. This study developed a desk-top methodology for using road classes (disaggregated by remoteness levels) to estimate the presence of quality roads, road delineation and speed signage in Victoria, Australia. Aerial imagery and mapping data were used to assess a number of random locations based on a developed protocol. The methodology demonstrated that in Victoria, major and arterial roads across all remoteness levels had high-quality sealed surfaces but 42% of all remote roads were unsealed. Delineation (crucial for lane support systems) were absent across 73% of sub-arterial roads independent of remoteness, and absent across 96% of sub-arterial roads in regional and remote areas. Speed sign availability across remote and regional areas was sparse, with only 65% of all roads assessed having signage. Results are reflective of Victoria’s road funding model and consistent with on-road audits conducted by other researchers. This methodology enables the proportion ADAS-ready roads to be estimated so the benefits of ADAS technologies can be quantified and investments into ADAS-supportive infrastructure be readily allocated.

Achieving remote and rural road safety is a global challenge, exacerbated in Australia and New Zealand by expansive geographical variations and inconsistent population density. Consequently, there exists a rural-urban differential in road crash involvement in Australasia. New vehicle technologies are expected to minimise road trauma globally by performing optimally on high quality roads with predictable infrastructure. Anecdotally, however, Australasia’s regional and remote areas do not fit this profile. The aim of this study was to determine if new vehicle technologies are likely to reduce road trauma, particularly in regional and remote Australia and New Zealand. An extensive review was performed using publicly available data. Road trauma in regional and remote Australasia was found to be double that of urban regions, despite the population being approximately one third of that in urban areas. Fatalities in 100 km/h + speed zones were overrepresented, suggestive of poor speed limit settings. Despite new vehicle ownership in regional and remote Australasia being comparable to major cities, road infrastructure supportive of new vehicle technologies appear lacking, with only 1.3–42% of all Australian roads, and 67% of all New Zealand roads being fully sealed. With road quality in regional and remote areas being poorly mapped, the benefits of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) technologies cannot be realised despite the fact new vehicles with these technologies are penetrating the fleet. Investments should be made into sealing and separating roads but more importantly, for mapping the road network to create a unified tracking system which quantifies readiness at a national level.

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The 1990s saw the emergence of the Swedish Vision Zero and the Dutch Sustainable Safety philosophies on road safety. At the time, both were considered somewhat radical and ambitious departures from the status quo. The principles that underpinned both the Dutch and Swedish philosophies were combined into an internationalized form, now known more widely as the Safe System. The Safe System came to attention early in the 2000s, when formally adopted by a number of countries committed to preventing severe road trauma. The Safe System defines a new way of thinking about road safety compared with what had commonly been used around the world in the decades before its conception. The Safe System strives to eliminate death and severe injury from the world’s roads. It also underlines the importance of the safe management of kinetic energy and system-based design that seeks to ensure that crashes are prevented or, at worst, crash forces fall within the threshold of human tolerance to severe injury. Once this thinking is embraced by the system designer, new solutions begin to emerge, and existing designs can be seen in a different, more insightful light. The process of transitioning to the ambitious, ethically based philosophy of the Safe System, as a means of addressing the risks of using our roads, has not happened smoothly or quickly. Practitioners have had difficulty in translating the philosophy and principles of the Safe System into practice. It is hoped that by providing examples of the differences in decisions made under Safe System principles when designing and operating roads, large gains will be made toward the lasting elimination of road trauma. A major focus of the discussion is on the Safe System-aligned design of infrastructure, coupled with vehicle operating speeds, while also recognizing the contributions to risk reduction that can come from improved human performance and the evolving safety features and technologies of modern vehicles.

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) provide warnings to drivers and, if applicable, intervene to mitigate a collision if one is imminent. Autonomous emergency brakes (AEB) and lane keep assistance (LKA) systems are mandated in several new vehicles, given their predicted injury and fatality reduction benefits. These predicted benefits are based on the assumption that roads are always entirely supportive of ADAS technologies. Little research, however, has been conducted regarding the preparedness of the road network to support these technologies in Australia, given its vastly expansive terrain and varying road quality. The objective of this study was to estimate what proportion of crashes that are sensitive to AEB and LKA, would not be mitigated due to unsupportive road infrastructure, and therefore, the lost benefits of the technologies due to inadequate road infrastructure. To do this, previously identified technology effectiveness estimates and a published methodology for identifying ADAS-supportive infrastructure availability was applied to an estimated AEB and LKA-sensitive crash subset (using crash data from Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, 2013–2018 inclusive). Findings demonstrate that while the road networks across the three states appeared largely supportive of AEB technology, the lack of delineation across arterial and sub-arterial (or equivalent) roads is likely to have serious implications on road safety, given 13–23% of all fatal and serious injury (FSI) crashes that occurred on these road classes were LKA-sensitive. Based on historical crash data, over 37 fatalities and 357 serious injuries may not be avoided annually across the three Australian states based on the lack of satisfactory road delineation on arterial and sub-arterial (or equivalent) roads alone. Further, almost 24% of fatalities in Victoria, 24% of fatalities in Queensland and 21% of fatalities in South Australia (that are AEB- or LKA-sensitive) are unlikely to be prevented, given existing road infrastructure. These figures are conservative estimates of the lost benefits of the technologies as they only consider fatal and serious injury crashes and do not include minor injury or property damage crashes, the benefits of pedestrian-sensitive AEB crashes in high-speed zones or AEB fitted to heavy vehicles. It is timely for road investments to be considered, prioritised and allocated, given the anticipated penetration of the new technologies into the fleet, to ensure that the road infrastructure is capable of supporting the upcoming fleet safety improvements.

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