How innovation in technology is driving safer roads

With over 90% of road crashes caused by human error, leveraging technology to reduce incidents is vital. Connected vehicles are a perfect example of Internet of Things (IoT) in action and demonstrates how technology can create safer roads.

Australia’s largest on-road pilot of connected vehicles and Infrastructure: City of Ipswich

Cisco is working in conjunction with the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) and Telstra, to deliver Australia’s largest on-road pilot of connected vehicles and infrastructure in the City of Ipswich, launched in July 2020 and will run for 14 months.

“The importance of connected vehicles, whether automated or driven by humans, to help avoid collisions, protect pedestrians and cyclists and smooth traffic flow on congested roads cannot be underestimated,” explains Jamie Smith, Telstra’s Executive Lead for Smart Transport – Strategic Growth

“The Connected and Automated Vehicle Initiative (CAVI) and Cooperative Intelligence Transport Systems (C-ITS) pilot is being run at over 40 intersections using 500 public vehicles with DSRC wireless technology, as part of V2X to “connect” Vehicles-to-Vehicles (V2V) and Vehicles-to-Infrastructure (V2I).

This technology enables the sharing of important data that supports use cases such as road works warning, back of queue warning, red light violator warning, red light warning, stopped or slow vehicle warning, hazard warning, turning warning for bicycle riders and pedestrians.

Cisco & Telstra alliance creating technology to support future use cases for connected roads

Cisco Edge and Fog Computing plays a crucial role in the pilot. Installed at each of the intersections – Cisco IoT hardware is not only providing infrastructure communications between connected vehicles but is also managing data flow through edge intelligence and extracting, transforming, governing and delivering data at both the local and cloud level.

Edge and Fog Computing significantly reduces latency and cost by performing processing as close to the data source as possible which is crucial in a connected vehicle environment where time-critical safety applications need to respond as quickly as possible.

This pilot has been made possible via the Cisco and Telstra alliance, leveraging the long-standing relationship to bring customer success through cutting edge technology. The trial runs over a period of 9 months and will provide valuable data and analytics on the possibilities that Edge and Fog Computing can bring to Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

For more information about the program and technology, you can visit