A road safety design competition is seeing traffic engineering students integrate Safe System principles into their work — and compete for $10,000 in prize money.
The Victorian Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030 commits to the ambitious target of eliminating death from our roads by 2050, with the first step of halving road deaths by 2030.
The Transport Accident Commission (TAC) works closely with its road safety partners, including the Department of Transport and Planning and Local Governments to reduce road trauma on the state’s road network. Achieving this target means acknowledging one central truth: people make mistakes.
Understanding the inevitability of human error is a key factor that underpins the international best-practice Safe System philosophy around road safety. Aiming to eliminate serious road trauma via the well planned interaction between roads, vehicles, speeds and road users, Safe System sees road safety as a shared responsibility and asks engineers and planners to reconsider their approach to road design.
To help prepare the next generation of road and traffic engineers to make the most effective use of Safe System principles, TAC holds the annual Future Road Competition. A trio of RMIT students were announced as the 2025 winners of the design challenge after participating in a hands-on Masterclass for the finalists in September.
“A safe system means that if people do make mistakes, they shouldn’t get hurt,” said RMIT civil engineering student Faydh Mohammed, a member of the winning team.
“To protect vulnerable road users, the Safe System advises that speeds should be less than 30 km/h at the point of conflict, and kinetic energy shouldn’t be so high that it impacts (seriously injures) any of the user road groups.”
Walking in another’s shoes
With these principles in mind, Mohammed and his teammates, mechatronics engineering student Akmal Azeem and mechanical engineering student Leander Glen Dsouza, took on the design brief that formed the basis of this year’s competition.
The teams were asked to consider nine different design alternatives for a real-world intersection project in the City of Greater Bendigo, including the pedestrian-friendly roundabout that was chosen as the actual solution. Then, drawing upon software modelling, guidance from experts and diligent application of the Safe System principles, the teams ranked the options from best to worst.
“We took into account the different perspectives of the people using that roundabout,” Mohammed said.
“When we started to explore the scenario and put ourselves in those situations, we realised that our number one priority would be the pedestrians. Then we allocated each user group accordingly based on what we saw when we put ourselves in their shoes.”
Applying that approach to other groups of road users allowed the team to determine, for instance, the speed limit that would be required to reduce injuries to motorists or consider the vulnerability a cyclist has compared to someone riding a motorcycle.
According to Wayne Moon, a safe system specialist at Wayne Moon Consulting, Australia adopted the Safe System approach in 2004 and the approach is well documented within relevant parts of Austroads (road safety) guides.
“However, since that time, we’ve become aware of important elements that are more relevant and contemporary, like kinetic energy management, to safer intersection geometric design. To date, they don’t have a strong home in the current geometric design guidelines,” he said.
Chris Hall, Road Safety Infrastructure Program Manager at the TAC, said road design plays an important role in bringing geometric requirements together with road safety philosophies. He acknowledged that significant work has recently been undertaken both internationally and nationally to embed Safe System principles into road design, and noted opportunities to further incorporate these principles into design tools.
“Some engineers are aware there’s a guide to road safety, but then they’re potentially not aware of recent developments or changes in best practice,” he said.
“By ensuring future engineers are equipped with a strong understanding of both safe system principles and how to incorporate these into road design requirements, the industry can continue to build this progress and contribute to our 2050 target.”
Helping bring these two worlds together was the software the students used in the competition Masterclass: a custom built kinetic energy prototype model using CAD software, MicroStation. The geometric design in the modelling had been enhanced with Safe System metrics such as kinetic energy checks, specifically tailored for safer geometric intersection design and then cross checked against recently developed harm thresholds.
“It would determine what a safe speed would be at an intersection as you move through, considering what a car is going to do, which path it is going to take, the key conflict point, and whether it’s going to pass the Safe System check,” Azeem said.
“You can draw on these tools to improve the solution that you’re providing.”
A multidisciplinary perspective
All three members of the winning team enthusiastically recommended the experience to others, pointing to the real-world professional experience it offered, as well as the networking opportunities with industry peers and experts and the opportunity to set themselves apart in the job market.
“Having done this competition highlights that I’m a civil engineer who has had experience in the Safe System, and I can take that value into the workplace,” Mohammed said.
Dsouza added that he appreciated the multidisciplinary perspective he gained from working with a diverse team.
“In mechanical engineering, it’s all about the minute parts and details, whereas here there are no actual parts; it’s a road that you’ve got to design in such a way that no one ends up getting injured, everyone is safe, and they experience a comfortable drive,” he said.
Moon said he hoped teams would take away an awareness of what constitutes better and safer design, and how to do it.
“The competition is really intended to enlighten students about these new contemporary ideas, but also to encourage universities and make them aware that this information exists and that it’s free – plus, it is a great platform for innovation and further research,” he said.
“Ideally, the universities teach the undergraduates about this content, so over time they come into the industry and start to integrate this new thinking.”
Learn more about the Future Road Competition.
