RICHARD MIDDELMANN, VITRONIC MACHINE VISION AUSTRALIA PTY LTD
“There will be autonomous vehicles on local streets one day, but until there are there will be human motorists travelling too fast and that will mean that there will be a need for enforcement”
Vitronic’s Poliscan Speed Tower
highly urbanised, densely populated cities; then you have the regionalised populated areas and then you have the Outback where population density is extremely low and traffic volumes are very low as well. You have a state like Vic- toria which is roughly the size of the UK, but Western Australia is 2500km from one side to the other and that state has the largest state police force in the world. So there are regional differences, but also differences in training, differences in the type of offences committed, inci- dents we are trying to identify and so on. The type of system that is most effective in Australia,” he maintains, “is average speed, point-to-point systems as they are well-suited to lower traffic densities as you would ordinarily find in Europe. What we can provide here is the type of equipment, the technology, for multi- mode enforcement.”
www.thinkinghighways.com
TECHNOLOGY-LED In terms of development and inspiration it wasn’t all that long ago that Australia would looks to the US and Europe for guidance and influence but it certainly can’t be argued now that, in the enforce- ment sector at least, the tables have been turned and now it’s Europe and the US looksing enviously towards Australia. Not having the need for cross-border co- operation and having no common geo- graphical jurisdictions plays a part, but there’s a lot more to it than that. “It’s certainly a case of other countries
looking to Australia now, for sure. The enforcement program in Victoria, as an example, is undoubtedly world-leading, and that’s largely down to the safe sys- tem approach of addressing the road infrastructure, the vehicles and driver behaviour in a three-pronged attack,” Middelmann proudly observes. “We’re
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an active participant in the driver behav- iour space, but the programs they have here and the rigour with which they are executed are some of the most advanced that I have seen anywhere in the world.” Several articles in this issue of Con-
nected Australia address the topic of driv- erless vehicles and more than one focus on the unique potential Australia has to be at least a testing ground for autono- mous trucks. But just how feasible is that at the moment and, pertinently consid- ering who I am talking to, where does enforcement fit in? Middlemann is quick to answer. “As
long as people are in control of vehi- cles there’ll be a need for enforcement, quite simply. It’ll take an entire genera- tion for every vehicle on the road to be autonomous…if it ever happens. There’s no doubt that autonomous vehicles are coming though and they will be on our
CONNECTED AUSTRALIA SUPPLEMENT
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