QUT researchers have been awarded a total of $3,236,122 for eight projects from the Federal Government’s National Road Safety Action Grants Program – four under the Technology and Innovation stream and four in the Research and Data stream of the grants program.
The recipients are:
Professor Sebastien Glaser
Dr Sebastien Demmel, from CARRS-Q and School of Psychology and Counselling has received a $303,646 Technology and Innovation grant for the project Understanding fatigue in the operation of conditionally Automated Vehicles and an evaluation of HMI solutions for safe operation, with Dr Michael Pascale from Psilogi.
Dr Demmel said it was critical to improve our understanding of the human factors surrounding operators of L3 automated vehicles.
“L3 vehicles do not need the occupant to monitor the road but they still require the occupant to be available at all times to take over from the automated driving system if a situation arises that is outside the system’s operational design domain,” Dr Demmel said.
“Research shows human supervisors of an automated task can easily become distracted and disengaged from the task, so there is significant risk than the occupant of an L3 vehicle may be unable to safely regain control of their vehicle if required.”
“Fatigued people, such as shift workers, could be highly motivated to use a system that can reduce their driving workload, but fatigue and sleepiness could make them more at-risk during a take-over request.”
Dr Demmel said the project would quantify the take-over performance of fatigued drivers recruited from a pool of shift workers, and test human-machine interfaces (HMI) to remedy performance deficiencies.
“This project’s outcomes will enable a better understanding of “real-world” use of L3 automated vehicles by examining a common risk factor, fatigue, that could negatively affect the expected safety and productivity benefits of L3 vehicles.”
Dr Demmel will conduct this research with Professor Sebastien Glaser and Dr Natalie Watson-Brown.
Dr Mohammed Elhenawy, from CARRS-Q and QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling, has received a $601,799.90 Technology and Innovation grant to lead the project, Enhancing road safety: developing and testing VRU-activated monitoring and alert system.
Dr Elhenawy said the project aimed to create a state-of-the-art Vulnerable Road User (VRU) Detection and Warning System to significantly bolster road safety.
“Vulnerable road users are people such as pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists who are at high risk due to their lack of protective barriers and, often, low visibility,” Dr Elhenawy said.
“This innovative project seeks to implement a comprehensive and responsive system that detects VRUs on or near roadways, providing timely warnings to motorists.
“To do this, we will develop a sophisticated sensor system using cutting-edge technology, including high-resolution cameras and thermal imaging for all-day, all-weather monitoring.
“These sensors will be designed to detect VRUs with accuracy within a range of 100 metres, ensuring that drivers receive ample warning to adjust their driving accordingly.”
Dr Elhenawy’s team comprises Dr Sebastien Demmel, Professor Ioni Lewis, Professor Sebastien Glaser and Professor Andry Rakotonirainy, all from CARRS-Q and QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling. Other research team members: Dr Stewart Worrall, Dr Mao Shan, Dr Julie Stephany Berrio and Dr Kunming Li, from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney.
Dr Gowri Ramachandran
Professor Yanming Feng from QUT’s School of Computer Science has received a $443,981 Technology and Innovation grant from the National Road Safety Action Grants Program for the project Smart intersection control for enhanced road safety of vulnerable pedestrians.
Professor Feng will partner with custom-built intelligent transport systems developer HMI Technologies to develop enhanced safety solutions for people such as elderly adults, parents with strollers and people using wheelchairs when using pedestrian crossings.
Professor Feng said the current intersection control systems used rigid countdown timers at crossing which did not consider the diverse speeds of the people crossing.
“This leads to cars entering intersections while vulnerable pedestrians are still crossing in busy areas, significantly increasing crash risks,” Professor Feng said.
“This project aims to create affordable technology that adjusts signal times in real-time for vulnerable pedestrians can greatly improve safety using Vehicle-to-Everything communications and roadside units (RSUs) to provide an effective and scalable pedestrian safety solution.
“This solution involves low-cost Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) trackers, available from local transport authorities like disabled parking permits and attached to mobility aids, to alert RSUs for intersection control when a road user nears a crossing.”
Professor Feng’s team includes Dr Gowri Sankar Ramachandran, from QUT’s School of Information Systems, Professor Ashish Bhaskar from QUT’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Dr Shamsunnahar Yasmin from QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling, and HMI Technologies CEO Dean Zabrieszach.
Professor Hinze Hogendoorn
Professor Hinze Hogendoorn from QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling has received a Technology and Innovation $309,153 grant from National Road Safety Action Grants Program for the project, Keeping track of disappearing vehicles, understand the challenge of new technologies and emerging micromobility.
Professor Hogendoorn said this project aimed to guide traffic policies and safety systems by better understanding how our brains solve “occlusion”, when vehicles are hidden by other vehicles, for example, when a motorbike passes behind a truck.
“Humans are good at tracking moving vehicles, even during occlusion, by generating expectations about the vehicle’s real-time position, whether it is accelerating or not, and its expected reappearance,” Professor Hogendoorn said.
“This project will investigate how the human visual system solves this computational problem to help tackle two key challenges of occlusion:
“The high crash rates of e-scooters and e-bikes could be possibly due to motorists misjudging their motion trajectories.
“The second challenge of occlusion is that it is limiting development of robust, real-time computer vision systems for safe autonomous vehicles.
“Autonomous vehicles’ detection and tracking technology to sense other vehicles and road features is inspired by human biology so understanding how our visual system solves occlusion will help solve this problem for future generations of autonomous vehicles.”
The research team comprises Professor Hogendoorn, Professor Narelle Haworth and Professor Sebastien Glaser, all from CARRS-Q and School of Psychology and Counselling.
Professor Sharon Newnam from QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling has received a Research and Data grant of $360,034.75 from the National Road Safety Action Grants Program for the project, Improving post-crash patient outcomes: development and implementation of a road crash response tool, with industry partners Transport and Main Roads and Qld Fire and Emergency Service.
Professor Newnam said Australia had limited data on the extrication of trauma patients involved in vehicle collisions which has meant limited road crash rescue (RCR) assistance to injured patients, in contrast to the UK and Scandinavia who led in the world in best practice through single road crash rescue trauma guidelines, rapid extrication techniques and multi-agency training.
“The aim of this project is to develop and trial a data collection tool in consultation with key stakeholders in the emergency services that details: RCR, techniques used, types of vehicles, the actions that were taken and the equipment that was used,” Professor Newnam said.
“The collection of this type of data will inform changes to delivery and further review of RCR responses in Australia. In the short-erm changes will include evidence-based extrication changes, response refinement and education for rescue technicians.
“Long term changes may include changes to response modelling recommendations for road rescue public safety.”
The research team comprises Professor Newnam and Olivia Dobson from QUT and will be co led by Joff van Ek from the National Rescue and Critical Care Group.
QUT Transport and Main Roads Chair Professor Alexander Paz from QUT’s School of Civil and Environment Engineering has received a $482,530 Research and Data grant from the National Road Safety Action Grants Program for the project Incorporating road safety throughout the network-level transport planning process.
Professor Paz said the project would help address emerging challenges to road safety such as e-micro mobility, heavy vehicles, and motorcycles and associated global issues including high capital costs of infrastructure, climate crisis and environmental degradation.
“Currently, engineers and planners perform network-level transport planning without explicitly including road safety, for example, the planned traffic speed of roadways is based on forecasted travel demand and a desired level-of-service, not on the safety consequences of such speed,” Professor Paz said.
“It is only at the roadway design and operation stages, after the network-level infrastructure has been decided, that the impact of traffic speeds is considered when it is harder to change them.
“The goal of this research is to develop an integrated framework and software tools to enable transport network design to consider multiple objectives including minimisation of crashes and severe injury.”
The QUT research team comprises Professor Paz, Professor Ashish Bhaskar, and Professor Mazharul Haque, from QUT’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Dr Shamsunnahar Yasmin, from QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling; Professor Paul Corry and Associate Professor Helen Thompson, both from QUT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, Dr Annastiina Silvennoinen, From QUT’s School of Economics and Finance; and PhD student Zeke Ahern.
Professor Ronald Schroeter.
Professor Andry Rakotonirainy, from QUT’s Centre for Accident Research Road Safety (CARRS-Q) and School of Psychology and Counselling, has received a Research and Data grant of $478,347 from the National Road Safety Action Grants Program for the project, Are Electrical Vehicles safer than Combustion Engine Vehicles?
Professor Rakotonirainy said the lack of nationally consistent road safety data on electric vehicles (EVs) hampered tracking their progress towards Vision Zero, the Australian governments’ goal of zero road deaths and zero serious injuries by 2050.
“EVs are heavier than petrol vehicles and thus have higher trauma outcomes in crashes, their high acceleration and deceleration abilities affect driver behaviour, and their silent operation is a risk for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians,” Professor Rakotonirainy said.
“This project aims to use AI to link vehicle telematics (technology that collects and transmits data about vehicles), household travel surveys and traffic/crash databases and systematically identify contributing factors to EV crashes and near-misses.
“The project will provide empirical evidence to assess and predict the safety of EVs, supporting data-driven decision-making and proactive adjustments to safety strategies as needed.”
The project team comprises Professor Rakotonirainy, Dr Mohammed Elhenawy, Professor Sebastien Glaser, Professor Ronald Schroeter, and Dr Shamsunnahar Yasmin.
Collaborating organisations include the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, TMR, Motorweb, QFleet and compassIOT.
Dr Shamsunnahar Yasmin (Shams) has received a $256,631 research and data grant from the National Road Safety Action Grants Program for the project, A new approach to analysing Indigenous road safety without records of Indigenous Australian status in the crash data.
Dr Yasmin, from QUT’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said Australia’s Indigenous people face three times higher risk of death and 1.4 times high hospitalisations in road crashes compared to non-Indigenous Australians.
“Road crash databases are generally limited by the absence of readily available Indigenous status indicators which has led to a reliance on health and welfare databases for understanding First Nations road safety trends despite these sources lacking detailed crash information,” Dr Yasmin said.
“The project will examine crash causation of First Nations road trauma by building baseline data using a RAD (realistic artificial data) generation process to complement police-reported crash data with the Indigenous status indicators from Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey data.
“The systematic investigation into the First Nations road trauma will guide Safe System-based interventions, including speed management, vehicle safety, and combating of recorded risky behaviour.”
The QUT research team comprises Dr Yasmin, Professor Shimul (Md Mazharul) Haque, Professor Andry Rakotonirainy, and Dr Hassan bin Tahir and Adjunct Professor Teresa Senserrick.
The researchers will collaborate with the Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research, University of Western Australia.
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