Track Day 2024 a Major Success

On Thursday 21st March, Compass held our annual Track-Side Professional Developement Day at Sandown Raceway, Melbourne. Over 150 transport professionals from across NSW, VIC, SA, and QLD state government transport authorities and private sector spent the day participating in real-life road safety experiments and listening to presentations on how Compass Connected Vehicle data is being applied across Australia.

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The event brought together innovative transport leaders from organisations such as Suncorp, the Department of Transport and Planning Victoria (DTP), University of Melbourne, GHD, Transport for New South Wales, The Transport Accident Commission (TAC) City of Casey, City of Whittlesea, Transurban, Austroads, MyNRMA, Northern Beaches Council, and Mornington Peninsula Shire Council. Presenters included:

• Roberto Evangelio, Director of Transport Insights & Evidence from DTP Victoria
• Sarah Dods, Southern Hemisphere Leader, Advanced Analytics & AI from GHD
• Neema Nassir, Senior Lecturer & Discipline Coordinator  from University of Melbourne
• David Beck ,  Road Safety Technical Manager from Transurban
• Roger Poeth, Co-founder of Highway Resource Solutions  in partnership with Altus Group
• Kathryn Snow an d Wes Mayne, Acting Manager (Business Intelligence)  & Manager (Freight Insights) from DTP
• Phillip Devon, Manager - Traffic Networks from Northern Beaches Council

Key Learnings From The Road Safety Experiments

Attendees participated in 5 experiments that imitated sections of the road network under different speeding and braking conditions:

1. a Roundabout
2. Speed and G-forces around curves
3. Stopping distance and harsh braking
4. Swerving and sudden lane change
5. Continuous acceleration and deceleration

Participants received personalised results via their phone for their overall trip results and the results of each individual experiment

Aggregate Results

Speeds

Biggest variance in speed was recorded at the swerving experiment. Most people did the braking and congestion experiment at similar speeds.The maximum speed reached was 134km/h.

G-forces‍

The biggest variance in g-force was recorded on the braking and roundabout experiments. Most drivers had similar g-forces across the lane changing and congestion experiments. The highest recorded g-force was 1.87 on the harsh braking experiment, more than double the safe threshold of 0.47.

Braking and Stopping

Most drivers underestimated how long it would take to stop. The average guess from drivers was half of the actual stopping distance. On average, it took about 32m for drivers to stop after slamming on the brakes. Drivers that guessed more accurately, braked more suddenly than those who overestimated.

Self-reporting

We asked drivers to estimate their g-forces at each experiment. Most people (41.8%) underestimated the g-forces they experienced, with the highest level of 'underestimation' occurring at the swerving experiment (50% of drivers underestimated the g-forces of their vehicle). Drivers were least accurate at predicting g-forces during the braking experiment.

Drivers were also asked to self-report compliance with speed limits at roadwork sites and to predict what percentage of people they believe are actually compliant. There was a large disparity between the number of people that self-reported to comply with roadwork posted speed limits (84%) and the percentage of drivers they believed were actually compliant with roadwork posted speed limits.