Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

'A long road': the Australian city aiming to give self-driving cars the green light

'A long road': the Australian city aiming to give self-driving cars the green light

Ipswich is an ideal place to trial technology to bring fully self-driving cars to Australian cities. But the project has had to overcome a lot of road bumps

As the traffic lights turn from amber to red, Miranda Blogg accelerates towards them.

“Here we go,” she says.

A dash-mounted screen in her Renault ZOE flashes a warning featuring a traffic light symbol.

Blogg continues. “Oh no, I’m not slowing!”

The screen erupts with a more aggressive visual display (“Stop!”) accompanied by three loud, grating, beeps.

“Whoops,” she says, as she brakes, still well ahead of the lights.

A dash-mounted screen in a Renault Zoe helps test self-driving systems in Ipswich.


Blogg is the director of the Connected and Automated Vehicle Initiative (Cavi) at Queensland’s transport department. Since September it has retrofitted 350 vehicles with cloud-connected antennae, under-the-seat control boxes and dash-mounted screens to test systems in the streets of Ipswich that might one day allow fully self-driving cars to operate.

This technology installed as part of the Ipswich connected vehicle pilot – Australia’s largest to date – allows cars to communicate with other cars, sharing information about their position, speed and other data, and to receive real-time warnings from roadside infrastructure about road hazards or red lights.

Early results show that drivers do pay attention when “talking cars” warn them about approaching red lights, reduced speed limits and pedestrians.

Blogg says that emerging data is promising, but further research will be needed to explore whether the system could work on a broader scale.

As we crawl through Brisbane’s peak-hour traffic, heading west towards Ipswich with Blogg behind the wheel, the dash-mounted screen displays nothing more than a static white circle.

But as we hit the Centenary Highway, just past the Moggill Road turnoff, we enter the 300 sq km radius of roads that are part of the trial, and the screen blinks to life, showing the current speed limit.

A few kilometres further on, Blogg points out a roadside sign flashing a variable speed limit, signalling that the usual 90km/h limit has been reduced to 80.

The screen display immediately follows suit, thanks to the feed coming from TMR’s real-time traffic management platform.

Being able to “read” variable speed limit signs is crucial to the connected driving vision, which demands accurate real-time feeds from a multitude of sources. There are 90 jurisdictions in Queensland that manage speed limits, including 77 local councils, 12 TMR districts and the toll-road operator Transurban.

“It seems simple but it’s actually quite a lot of effort,” Blogg says.

Cloud-connected antennae retrofitted to cars can ‘talk’ to information-gathering antennae on traffic lights in Ipswich.


As we reach the central business district of Ipswich, Blogg circles the block to demonstrate the car’s ability to recognise the red light – one of the 30 sets in Ipswich fitted with information-gathering antenna.

Similar warnings are activated when drivers head towards hazards such as water on the road, road closures or a crash, or when there are pedestrians or bicycles crossing at an intersection.

No vehicles have yet been automated as part of this trial, says Prof Andry Rakotonirainy, the director of QUT’s centre for accident research and road safety, one of the partners in the trial.

However, the technology represents an important link in the transition to self-driving cars. In the meantime, it will “help people to drive safely, and potentially reduce road trauma”, he says.

Participants are now being recruited for a different trial, which will include elements of automation.

Ipswich was chosen for the trial partly thanks to its proximity to smart motorways, which already embed information, communications and control systems in and alongside the road.

Unlike Brisbane, it uses the same standard traffic signals as rest of the state. Unlike the Gold Coast, it has no expanding light rail network to complicate matters. And unlike the Sunshine Coast, the CBD has a grid structure, facilitating ample interactions between cars, bikes and pedestrians.

There was one more reason – when the trial was set up, the ebullient “Mr Ipswich”, Paul Pisasale, was mayor.

Pisasale threw his support behind the iGO plan for a sustainable transport future and the Smart City program, which promised innovations such as robotic street cleaners, wheelie bins that alert garbage trucks when they need to be emptied and park benches with solar-powered charging stations.

These initiatives survived the downfall of Pisasale, who resigned in June 2017, and was later jailed in relation to a raft of charges including extortion, fraud and sexual assault, and the later sacking of the entire Ipswich City Council in 2018, followed by a 16-month period of administration.

It was a tumultuous time, which heightened concerns over the continuity of the project.

“We moved pretty quickly to gain the support of the new councillors,” Blogg says. “Sometimes it can be a very complicated project to explain [but] they were great, they were on it, which made my life much easier.”

Other challenges lay ahead, including equipment malfunctions due to summer temperatures in Ipswich which are, on average, 5C higher than Brisbane’s.

Then followed a year of more or less empty roads due to Covid-19, which the team filled with up to 30,000 kilometres of on-road testing to keep participants motivated and to prepare for the current on-road phase.

“Some may refer to it as the Cavi curse,” Blogg says. “It was a long road.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×