Vehicle and road infrastructure experts recently explored how technologies from their fields will ‘work together’ to prevent common types of vehicle and motorcycle crashes and those involving pedestrians and bicyclists.
Participants in the workshop, which was hosted by RACV in Melbourne, Australia, also considered the challenge of preventing crashes involving the rapidly growing ‘e-bike’ fleet in many parts of the world.
Although advanced V2V and V2I technology which may lead to ‘self-driving’ cars was cited as having enormous potential, there was also a focus was on the safety gains of rapid, wide-scale deployment of already-proven technology and techniques, especially in rapidly developing countries.
Examples considered include: emergency brake assist which helps drivers to quickly slow their car, flexible safety barriers that are highly-effective at dissipating energy and innovative forms of head-protection for bicyclists.
The workshop was developed by iRAP and GNCAP, and built on the Roads That Cars Can Read Initiative. ARRB Group is currently producing a Research Report that will document proceedings.