How soon is now? The convincing case for connected vehicles

The long-held great hopes for connected vehicles are attendant, marked improvements in road congestion and safety. Accompanying the hope though is some disappointment at the speed at which we’re shifting to deploying the technologies. A recently completed iMOVE project has looked at what could be done to speed up the shift, what should be done, and how it might best be done.

The iMOVE project was Accelerating the uptake of C-ITS technologies in Australia. Lead company on the project was ITS Australia, with research from the University of Melbourne, and participants including the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, IAG, Intelematics, and Transmax.

Project objectives

The objectives of the project were to:

1. Detail the applications and penetration of levels of connectivity – including internet enabled devices as well as DSRC – 5G, with a focus on safety and congestion use cases.
2. Desktop study to understand the percentage of connected and C-ITS enabled vehicles to enable positive impacts in safety and network productivity.
3. Research investigating the range of devices and technologies currently available and their uses and emerging technologies.
4. Environmental scan to study the current and projected percentage of connected and C-ITS vehicles.
5. Review of data from C-ITS and Automated Vehicles trials – CITI, CAVI and AIMES.
6. Potential pathways to achieve the desired penetration and assessment of most effective use.

Findings

The project commenced in November 2019, ran for eight months, and has now produced a final report.

Key points on safety and congestion benefits of connected vehicles from within the report include:

• Many stakeholders were agnostic towards the uptake and use of DSRC and/or C-V2X and were more interested in the potential for connectivity to provide road safety and traffic efficiency benefits.
• Overall, stakeholders viewed C-ITS technology as a singular opportunity to improve road safety outcomes, with potential benefits to reduction of crash rates an order of magnitude higher than other known safety technologies (such as existing ADAS)
• A review of the expected road safety and traffic benefits finds that connectivity can also augment the existing advanced driver assistance systems, with clear safety benefits for V2V and V2I applications. However, the benefits of V2P applications are less understood at this stage.
• A comprehensive analysis of Victorian Road Safety data, covering a fifteen-year period with approximately 190,000 recorded crashes indicated that eight major connected safety use cases: Lane Keep Assist, Curve Speed Warning, Cooperative Forward Collision Warning, Do Not Pass Warning, Intersection Movement Assist, Right Turn Assist, Cooperative Blind Spot Warning, and Pedestrian Safety Messages, have the capability to address approximately 80% of crashes on Victorian roads, specifically 78% of fatal crashes, 82% of serious injury crashes, and 84% of other injury crashes.
• Traffic microsimulation experiments in arterial corridors indicated that connected vehicles at penetration rates of 30% (V2V and V2I) can reduce peak congestion by up to 11%.
• Considering the significant potential benefits in terms of crash reductions and congestion alleviation reported in the literature, a comprehensive benefit cost analysis with a specific focus on safety outcomes for Australia is recommended.

iMOVE Managing Director Ian Christensen said, ‘C-ITS is a technology whose time has arrived, and based on research not only by our research partners in Australia but all around the world we know lives will be saved by a reduction in fatal accidents.’

Click the button below to download a copy of the report.