Government access to vehicle generated data

In November 2020, the Infrastructure and Transport Ministers Meeting (ITMM) agreed to establish a National Vehicle Data Working Group that will lead the development of the vision and principles for the future exchange of vehicle and road operator data.

The group membership will consist of representatives from industry and government, with a broad range of technical expertise, including sectors impacted by the Group’s proposals.

The NTC will work with industry stakeholders, the Australian government, state and territory governments and Austroads to formally establish the working group and report back to ITMM annually on progress.

Vehicle generated data is creating potential opportunities for transport agencies to create public value by enhancing network operations, investment, maintenance, planning and road safety.

Australia’s transport agencies seek to understand how they may access and create value from this data without raising commercial, privacy, security issues or disincentives to deployment of technology.

At a meeting of the Australian Transport and Infrastructure Council (now called ITMM) in August 2019 it was agreed that:

• The NTC should work with jurisdictions, the Commonwealth and Austroads to analyse future government access and use of Cooperative-Intelligent Transport Systems and automated vehicle data, including for network efficiency, infrastructure investment and road safety.

The review will be delivered in partnership with Austroads and state and territory agencies.

What is vehicle generated data?

Many vehicles in Australia are already connected. Some industry predictions suggest that between 75-90 per cent of new vehicles could be internet connected by 2022.

V2X (vehicle to anything) systems may also be introduced to the market in the coming years, which may be capable of producing safety messages to nearby infrastructure or other road users.

The types of vehicle generated data a vehicle may be capable of producing could include:

• Crash or event data recorders: Data stored and recorded on a crash or event data recorder for the purposes or crash reconstruction or liability. It could include automated driving data in future.
• Location data: precise geographic location of vehicle (location, speed, heading, vehicle type)
• Vehicle technical/safety: Operational functioning of the vehicle including: ABS/ESC sensor activation, windscreen wiper status, steering angle, battery status
• Driver data: Information about either the physical state of the driver (e.g. eye movement) or how a person drives a vehicle (seat belt status, harsh braking)
• Sensor data: Data about how the car perceives its remote environment including infrastructure, other road users. E.g. Radar/LIDAR/Machine vision or data derived from this information – such as lane departure warning events