Possible safety benefits from ITS in Australia

Many safety-oriented intelligent transport systems (ITS) are currently available or about to come on to the market. Information on their likely safety benefits is mainly based on experience or estimates of their effects on crashes in Europe or North America. Crash reduction factors for a range of ITS technologies were identified. These crash reduction factors were then applied to crash data for all Australian jurisdictions. In line with Safe System priorities, the analysis focused on fatal and serious injury crashes. Cost benefit analyses were carried out. For roadside ITS, the results of the benefit-cost analysis were presented in terms of the number of serious injury crashes per year that would have to occur at a site before installing the technology would be economically viable. Required number of crashes was extremely low for a number of technologies (e.g. one serious injury crash per five years or less), implying that they would return good economic benefits at a wide range of sites. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E220164.