{"id":30095,"date":"2024-02-29T08:27:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T22:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infrastructuremagazine.com.au\/?p=51450"},"modified":"2024-02-29T08:27:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T22:27:10","slug":"world-first-driving-simulator-introduced-in-wa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=30095","title":{"rendered":"World-first driving simulator introduced in WA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western Australia will become home to a high tech, custom-made driving simulator set to help researchers improve road safety in the state.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The simulator, the only one of its kind in the world, will be based at The University of Western Australia\u2019s (UWA) Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research, enabling researchers to test the safety of new road designs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jointly funded by the Road Safety Commission ($450,000), Main Roads Western Australia ($160,000) and UWA ($100,000), the simulator will provide new opportunities for researchers to study a wide range of road safety issues with a high degree of realism \u2013 all free from the risk of a crash.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Research opportunities include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Testing new road layouts<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Assessing driver distraction from roadside advertising<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Studying at risk groups such as young and older drivers<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Testing the impact of the use of drugs, fatigue, and alcohol on driving skills<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The simulator is expected to enable collaboration between researchers across multiple disciplines including road safety, engineering, ophthalmology, psychology, physiology and mathematics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The simulator has the advantage of:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adaptability \u2013 controlling and manipulating input variables such as behaviour of virtual traffic and pedestrians, weather conditions, and road design<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Repeatability and standardisation \u2013 participants can drive under exactly the same conditions<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ease of data collection \u2013 accurate and efficient measuring of driving performance<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Safety \u2013 safe environments free from crash risk and physical harm allowing drivers to be exposed to hazardous situations in a systematic way, which can be difficult to study in a natural driving environment<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western Australian Minister for Transport, Rita Saffioti, discussed the benefits of the investment from road safety partners.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cFunding new technology is another way we can help to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis technology will help us to better plan our road network by allowing us to test new designs in a simulated environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cTesting new road initiatives before they are implemented will save both time and money, enabling us to mitigate risks and cost effectively utilise our resources to make Western Australian roads safer and more efficient.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Western Australia will become home to a high tech, custom-made driving simulator set to help researchers improve road safety in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[471,163,8225,8204,8211,8203,8223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-rail-industry-news-australia-new-zealand","category-risk-management","category-roads","category-safety-and-training","category-spotlight","category-wa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30095"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37969,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30095\/revisions\/37969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}