An examination of potential exposure measures for vehicle safety technologies in South Australia

Abstract

Emerging vehicle safety technologies such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB) and lane keep assistance (LKA) systems are among a number of technologies for passenger vehicles that are likely to have a significant impact on road safety in the future. Their effects though, are highly dependent on those technologies becoming a more common feature in registered vehicles in South Australia (SA). While it is possible to monitor the prevalence of safety technologies on new vehicles sold in SA, a more involved process is required to determine the prevalence of these technologies in a representative sample in the SA registered vehicle fleet. A further, more complex issue is determining the 'exposure' of these new safety technologies on the SA road network. That is, even if it were possible to measure the number of registered vehicles in SA fitted with particular safety technologies, there is no accurate method to determine their likely effect until every registered vehicle in SA was fitted with that particular technology. Hence, while waiting for safety technologies to become a common feature of every registered vehicle, potential methods that might allow some degree of monitoring of the prevalence of safety technologies in the interim, are proposed and discussed in this report. While determining the prevalence of various technologies fitted on the registered vehicle fleet that is being driven on the SA road network is potentially feasible, the various processes are expensive and complex in nature, with sampling methods and on-going monitoring being most problematic.