Impact assessment of automated vehicles

October 22, 2020

Impact assessment of automated vehicles – watch the webinar!

There is growing consensus that public authorities have an important role to play to ensure vehicle automation delivers positive mobility outcomes and averts negative effects. To help them make the right policy choices requires an understanding of the potential impacts of automated vehicles and of the most suitable policy options. The LEVITATE and CoEXist projects are developing knowledge and tools to help cities prepare for and steer the introduction of automated vehicles. The webinar provided insights into the methods developed for assessing the impacts of automated vehicles across a range of mobility domains and the findings from their application in real-life scenarios and using policy options such as parking regulation, road pricing and dedicated AV lanes.

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LEVITATE partner in the spotlight – SWOV, Institute for Road Safety Research

“LEVITATE is a very interesting and relevant project for SWOV. We expect CATS to have an enormous impact on (urban) traffic and subsequently also on road safety. Moreover, as different impacts -including road safety- are interrelated, they should not be analysed in isolation but all together at the same time. That is one of the main strengths of LEVITATE, in my view.”

Interview with Wendy Weijermars, SWOV
Wendy is a traffic engineer by education, and she works at SWOV for more than thirteen years now. At SWOV she has been involved in a wide variety of projects, for example on road safety forecasts, safety at road work zones, safety performance indicators for roads, projects related to the safe system approach/sustainable safety and studies focusing on serious road injuries. Since July last year, she is research manager of the department ‘infrastructure and traffic’.
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A virtual experience with kids, citizens, and stakeholders during the EU Research & Innovation Days

LEVITATE was one of the lucky projects selected to take part in the exhibition to introduce project activities and the results of last 2 years of research on the societal level impacts of connected and automated vehicles. The virtual booth displayed the visual representation of the intended final output of LEVITATE: The Policy Support Tool, as well as the project video and leaflets which attracted hundreds of people during the three days.
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Watch the previous webinar on the impact of automation in urban transport

Urban mobility is going through unprecedented changes during this period. Cities are facing challenges which require unique solutions in no time due to the COVID-19 crisis. In addition to these, local mobility strategies for longer terms must be reviewed and adapted to the new normal. Will connected and automated technologies play a more substantial role in urban mobility? How can we predict their impacts on urban mobility? Register, and find it out with local representatives from Transport for Greater Manchester and LEVITATE work package leader on the case of urban transport: National Technical University of Athens.
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LEVITATE in the news

Predicting impacts of connected and automated vehicles; article by Rune Elvik (TOI)
The main objective of work package 3 of LEVITATE is to develop a broad set of methods for predicting the societal impacts of connected and automated vehicles. This is a multistage process, with the following main stages – mentioned in the article. Give it a read!
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System Dynamics
Dr Hitesh C Boghani and Dr Martin Zach co-authored the article ‘System Dynamics’. Owing its heritage to control theory, system dynamics is a modelling technique where the whole system is modelled at an abstract level by modelling the sub-systems at component level and aggregating the combined output. This allows us to use feedback/feedforward from one component to another within the system, which unfolds when output is viewed against time. Let us delve into this further by using an example of population dynamics.
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CATs in the news

Fill the survey about your intuitions regarding autonomous vehicles!
This survey is conducted by a research team of the Technical University of Munich and the Autonomous Drivers Alliance (ADA).
Common rulebook on automated driving gets go-ahead
More than 50 countries, including Japan, South Korea and the EU member states, have agreed common regulations for vehicles that can take over some driving functions, including having a mandatory black box - the UN announced.
Waymo launches fully autonomous fleet of self-driving taxis
Self-driving car company Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced its autonomous vehicles are now available to the general public —or at least paying customers.
Five things to know about: making self-driving cars safe
Self-driving cars, or connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), are closer than ever to becoming a mainstay on our roads. Already, many modern cars have self-driving capabilities—now the next step is full automation.

Upcoming events

20-22 October 2020: Virtual Smart Transport Conference
18 November 2020: Digital Transport Days 2020
30 November – 3 December 2020: POLIS Annual Conference goes online!
30 November – 1 December 2020: H2020 Road Transport Research European Conference
1-3 December 2020: IT Trans – International Conference and Exhibition
9-11 December 2020: EIT Urban Mobility Summit

About LEVITATE

The LEVITATE project develops methods to forecast societal level impacts of connected and automated transport (CATs). This includes the impact of CATs on safety, the environment, the economy and society.

Launched in December 2018, LEVITATE is a 3-year project led by Loughborough University whose main output will be a policy support tool (PST) to help local authorities forecast the impacts of automated vehicles over the short, medium and long-term. The PST will also contain a back-casting tool providing guidance to local authorities on the measures to implement to achieve desired outcomes against a backdrop of increasing vehicle automation.

LEVITATE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824361.

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