Lumen Winter 2016 - Flipbook - Page 15
story by Ian Williams
We showed that
in city areas every 5 km
speed increase above
the 60 km per hour
limit doubles the risk
of being involved in
an injury crash.
“Once the state lowered the default
speed limit from 60 km to 50 km in built
up areas the annual number of injury
crashes dropped by more than 200 and
pedestrian crashes fell by over 30 per
cent. You can’t get better proof than that.”
The results are just as significant on
rural roads where reductions from 110
km to 100 km per hour were found to
reduce injury crashes by almost a third.
CASR’s crash-scene investigations
have also prompted engineers to rethink
the way roadsides are designed.
Rather than clearing trees from the
sides of roads – which often triggers
community anger – CASR has shown
that safety outcomes can be better with
new barrier technology.
“CASR researchers attend about 50
road crashes every year and over the
past decades we’ve developed an
impressive database,” said Jeremy.
CASR showed that over half of all
fatal crashes and 90 per cent of injury
crashes are the result of mistakes,
inattention or lapses in judgement –
not extreme behaviour.
The finding has been instrumental
in helping to shape South Australia’s
current policy Road Safety Strategy
2020: Towards Zero Together.
Testing driverless cars
Driverless vehicles are the next big
thing in automobile development – and
CASR is already playing an important
behind-the-scenes role.
The centre’s breakthrough research
into autonomous vehicle safety systems
is proving a key advantage in the
State’s push to attract driverless vehicle
technology manufacturers.
“Our state is the first in Australia to
pass legislation allowing manufacturers
to test autonomous vehicles on our
roads and CASR will be closely involved,”
said Jeremy.
In the past vehicle safety has been
focused largely on protecting occupants
in a collision while technologies of the
future are all about avoiding the collision
in the first place. Research by CASR is
helping to test the effectiveness of many
of these systems.
Its recent research into autonomous
emergency braking – a system that uses
forward facing sensors to automatically
trigger the brakes to avoid a collision –
showed it could prevent 25 to 35 per
cent of crashes.
Another world-first study of wirelessly
connected vehicles found that half of all
injury crashes could be avoided along
with a third of fatal accidents.
CASR has also demonstrated the
value of automatic crash notification
technology by using its crash scene
database to highlight how many lives
could have been saved.
www.casr.adelaide.edu.au
Left: Giulio Ponte, Andrew van den Berg and Marleen
Sommariva completing a headform test on a windscreen
to evaluate the pedestrian safety of a vehicle
Below: The at-scene in-depth crash investigation team.
Standing from left: Dr James Thompson, Dr Jamie
Mackenzie, Dr Chris Stokes and Sam Doecke
Kneeling from left: Giulio Ponte, Simon Raftery
and Dr Jeff Dutschke
Photos by Jo-Anna Robinson
The University of Adelaide | Alumni Magazine 13
