About Us
The Vehicle Safety Research Group (VSRG) is a consortium of 9 government road authorities from Australia and New Zealand.
The consortium oversees a major program of research undertaken by MUARC focused on vehicle safety monitoring and evaluation. The MUARC research program commenced early 1990s and is based on the analysis of real world crash risk and injury outcomes. The data system developed for the program incorporates crash reports compiled by police, claims for injury compensation from road crashes and vehicle registration and roadworthiness data compiled by government agencies across Australia and New Zealand. Information on vehicle specifications is enhanced through a Vehicle Identification Number decoding system built from both national vehicle certification data third party vehicle fleet monitoring data. In combination the elements of the assembled data system provide a powerful analytical platform for examining vehicle safety from exposure through to crash outcome at a highly specific level of vehicle detail.
The agenda and scope for the VSRG research program is jointly set by the VSRG consortium members based on current strategic priorities for vehicle safety documented in regional and national road safety strategies. VSRG consortium members are also responsible for implementation and communication of the results from the program ensuring a high level of relevance and translation of program outputs. Impacts from the program can be seen in a range of settings from establishment of new vehicle safety design regulations to underpinning major consumer information programs on vehicle safety performance including the well-known Used Car Safety Ratings.
Our Team
Stuart Newstead
Stuart Newstead is Professor and Director of the Monash University Accident Research Centre where he also leads the Centre’s Injury Analysis and Data team. He holds a Ph.D. in applied statistics and is accredited by the Australian Statistical Society. He has developed specific expertise in a wide range of safety research areas with a numerical focus including: safety program evaluation; vehicle safety evaluation, monitoring and policy setting; police enforcement programs including policy and practice advice; vulnerable and high risk road user safety and countermeasures; safety strategy modelling; injury data systems design and analysis; and injury severity metrics. He has co-authored over 400 works with more than 160 of those in the peer reviewed literature.
Angelo D’Elia
Angelo is a Research Fellow at the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC), holds Honours degrees in Mathematical Statistics and Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Public Health. He is a member of the Injury Analysis and Data team and holds a joint appointment with the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit (VISU) as Statistical Consultant. Having worked in the road safety and injury prevention fields since 2005, he has developed a high level of analytical expertise in the areas of road safety countermeasure evaluation, and the linkage and analysis of injury databases. Research undertaken for the VSRG includes analysing vehicle safety technology effectiveness, investigating priorities for future vehicle safety regulation, and examining the differential effects of vehicle safety improvements on fatal and serious injury outcomes.
Casey Rampollard
Casey Rampollard has qualifications in criminology and data science and has worked at the Monash University Accident Research Centre for over a decade. She has extensive experience in automated enforcement research having completed a range of literature reviews on automated enforcement including technology reviews, site selection, technology effectiveness and strategic optimisation of programs. More broadly, Casey has a significant depth of experience in the conduct and analysis of large community surveys in addition to the analysis of complex and large-scale road safety data being responsible for coordination of the production of the Used Car Safety Ratings.
Max Cameron
Max Cameron is an Emeritus Professor at Monash Univerity. He was a part-time Professor (Research) in the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) where he worked from 1990 to 2023. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in mathematical statistics and a Ph.D. for his thesis on methods of evaluation of road trauma countermeasures. Max has worked in the road safety field in Australia since 1965, with extensive experience in road safety research and its management, and in road safety policy formulation and strategic planning. During 1990, he developed crashworthiness ratings that form the basis of the Used Car Safety Ratings, initially based only on Victorian crash data and subsequently adding crash data from NSW. He also developed the aggressivity ratings that form the other major component of the system.
Michael Keall
Mike Keall is a Research Professor in the Department of Public Health of Otago University, Wellington, who has been working as a consultant at the Monash University Accident Research Centre since he completed his PhD there in 2005. His research interests include transportation and transport safety as well as home falls prevention, economic analyses, natural experiments and the estimation of health benefits from active travel. His work with Monash has included developing methods for rating vehicle safety and for evaluating safety technologies as sell as conducting analyses designed to feed into road safety policy. Recently, he published with Professor Newstead a paper outlining a methodology and approach to assigning primary safety ratings to vehicles that account for safety technology fitment, designed to complement existing approaches (viz. ANCAP, Used Car Safety Ratings) that assess a vehicle’s ability to protect its occupants.
Contact Us
Email: muarc.vsrg@monash.edu