Skip to main content

Australia to trial autonomous vehicles on public roads

Australia’s Victorian government is to begin a trial to look at how automated vehicles can interact with Australian road infrastructure. VicRoads will work with industry to seek feedback on the government’s Future Directions Paper, which outlines the need for regulatory changes to allow testing of highly automated vehicles on public roads. The consultation will focus on how to ensure road safety during testing on public roads, what constitutes a driver ‘being in control’ and understanding how the changi
December 19, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Australia’s Victorian government is to begin a trial to look at how automated vehicles can interact with Australian road infrastructure. 4728 VicRoads will work with industry to seek feedback on the government’s Future Directions Paper, which outlines the need for regulatory changes to allow testing of highly automated vehicles on public roads.

The consultation will focus on how to ensure road safety during testing on public roads, what constitutes a driver ‘being in control’ and understanding how the changing technology will interact with our transport system.

It will also work to create a framework to allow for a wide range of vehicles to be trialled on Victoria’s roads, potentially including highly automated vehicles, where a driver is not in control of the vehicle.

From early next year, a range of automated vehicles will be trialled on the Monash-Citylink-Tullarmine corridor, in a partnership between the government and 600 Transurban.  The trial will test vehicles currently on the market, to understand how autonomous vehicle technology interacts with road infrastructure including overhead lane signals, electronic speed signs and line marking.

The trial will begin with testing automated vehicles that comply with existing road rules and road safety regulations. A human driver will monitor the vehicle’s operation, ready to take back control at any time.

It will also build on the knowledge gathered through the testing of the 311 Bosch Highly Automated Driving Vehicle unveiled during the 6456 ITS World Congress in October.

Related Content

  • December 4, 2012
    Assessing the potential of in-vehicle enforcement systems
    Jason Barnes considers the social and ethical ramifications of using in-vehicle safety technologies to fulfil enforcement functions. Although policy documents often imply close correlation between enforcement, compliance and safety – in part, as a counter to accusations that enforcement is rather more concerned with revenue generation – there is a noticeable reluctance among policy makers and auto manufacturers to exploit in-vehicle safety systems for enforcement applications. From a technical perspective t
  • October 12, 2021
    Australia highway to receive smart tech 
    Smart motorway tech will be installed between Pine River and Caloundra Road
  • October 18, 2013
    Spot speed deterrent proved to be transient
    As research and trials show the benefits of average speed enforcement - David Crawford reviews developments on two continents. August 2013 saw the switch on of the Australian State of Victoria’s latest combined point-to-point (P2P) average speed enforcement (ASE) and spot camera control system. Installed on the 27km Peninsula Link to the south-east of Melbourne, the system uses high-resolution automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and optical character recognition (OCR) technology developed b
  • March 1, 2013
    Evolving Australia's truck weighing programme
    Regulating heavy truck weight isn’t all about sensors in the road… this year marks a significant point in the progression of Australia’s Intelligent Access Programme as its administrators attempt to answer the scheme’s critics. Jon Masters reports. Australia’s Intelligent Access Programme (IAP), the country’s telematics-based system of reg­ulating movement of the heaviest vehicles, is now five years old. The IAP is administered by Transport Certification Australia (TCA) whose general manager for strategic d