Transport Accident Commission (TAC)
Company Info: The Transport Accident Commission’s (TAC) vision is no road death, no road injury and a future where every journey is a safe one. It works to reach the whole community to take responsibility for road safety. TAC’s main responsibility is to pay benefits to people injured in transport crashes, however, they also work closely with road safety partners to actively campaign to reduce the incidence of road trauma through injury prevention programs. TAC also works in partnership with key stakeholders to support research with two foci: to improve outcomes for clients and help reduce road trauma in Australia.
For more information: http://www.tac.vic.gov.au
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PROJECT 1: Development and validation of policy tool to reduce crashes, claims and claim costs
How should the safe system approach be adapted for risk takers? The ausRAP (Australian Road Assessment Program) promotes safer road infrastructure through the use of metrics to map risk and provide star ratings. While the program has been successful in many countries, as a policy tool, assessment may be suboptimal without metric specificity. This PhD will examine how the ausRAP methodology can impact on policy for improving road infrastructure safety through real world validation of predicted safety gains on crashes and claims. The research will examine how ausRAP can be used as a policy development tool to reduce claims and claim costs.
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PROJECT 2: Evaluation of the safety benefits of semi- and fully automated vehicles
The developers and supporters of fully automated vehicles have made many ambitious claims of their benefit to society, however few of these are based on sound research evidence and are largely unproven to date. There is a clear need to evaluate the road safety consequences of a future fleet of semi- and fully automated vehicles to help government agencies and consumers make informed decisions as they become available on the market. It has also been argued that there may be negative safety implications relating to the interactions between semi- and fully automated vehicles and the existing non-automated vehicle fleet, as well as unprotected road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. This PhD will investigate the safety effects and regulatory challenges of the various levels of automation and recommend the necessary measures that system operators will need to undertake to safely introduce these vehicles and take advantage of the full range of potential benefits on offer. The project will likely consider all relevant cornerstones of the Safe System, including Safe Road Users, Safe Vehicles, Safe Roads & Roadsides and Safe Speeds.