Queensland's Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), in partnership with the Queensland University of Technology and iMOVE Australia, undertook an evaluation of the safety benefits of a Cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) through the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot (ICVP). C-ITS vehicles, roadside infrastructure and cloud services share data, which is used to generate visual and/or audible warnings that are intended to improve a driver’s situational awareness.The ICVP included 355 participants with retrofitted equipment in their vehicles, 29 instrumented traffic-lights and a cloud service covering 300 square kilometres. Based on the driving condition and approaching speed, a driver could experience warnings about red-lights, pedestrians at traffic-lights, roadworks, road hazards, and back-of-queues on motorways. Posted speeds – static, variable, school and roadworks speeds were also displayed throughout the pilot area.Each participant drove for nine months and experienced warnings for six of these months creating treatment and baseline data, while a subgroup formed a control group that were never exposed to the warnings. This enabled the comparison of their driving data with and without the warnings. Three hypotheses were evaluated: lower speed, smoother speed variation and fewer near-crashes.The driving data showed positive safety results, overall, demonstrating improved driver behaviour. Warnings at roadwork, red-lights and pedestrians at traffic-light situations were found to reduce and smooth speeds. From these use cases, assuming 100 per cent penetration of C-ITS in vehicles, the network-wide crash reduction factors were estimated to be up to to 6.8% of fatal crashes and 6.6% of crashes involving serious injuries.

Department of Transport and Main Roads, Queensland, Australia: Merle Wood, Jack Pinnow; Queensland University of Technology: Mohammed Elhenawy; WSP, Queensland, Australia: David Alderson