Associate Professor David Logan is a Senior Researcher and Associate Director at MUARC, leading the Traffic Engineering and Vehicle Safety (TEVS) team and working closely with the Behavioural Science and Injury Analysis & Data teams.  

After obtaining a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, he spent several years in engineering consulting, working in a variety of areas including vibration analysis, low volume vehicle compliance, heavy vehicle brake system testing, and acoustics and noise control.

Joining MUARC in 2001, David is involved currently in road safety strategy modelling and implementation; and pedestrian and intersection safety numeric modelling.  He managed the multidisciplinary real-world crash investigation team for nine years and has substantial research expertise in this area, as well as presenting invited lectures to both school and professional groups.  

He coordinated a program to commission two instrumented on-road vehicles, permitting semi- and fully-automated real-time acquisition of a variety of naturalistic driving data.  David also provides expertise to industry in safe vehicle purchasing, feature selection and operation to improve workplace road safety.

In the last ten years A/Prof. Logan has developed unique expertise in the modelling and development of road safety strategies, working with both national and international jurisdictions with the interrogation of road safety data and the selection and development of appropriate road safety initiatives.  He leads the development of the eMETS model for estimating the population level reductions in fatal and serious trauma possible from both individual countermeasures, as well as scenario modelling of packages of countermeasures making up road safety strategies.

David has based his road safety career around the principles of the Safe System and Swedish Vision Zero philosophies, working towards this approach in all facets of his research.

He has worked with the World Health Organization and World Bank on several projects in low- and middle-income countries, including a review of Thailand’s status against the 12 UN voluntary road safety goals, which was presented to Thai Members of Parliament, senators and high-level road safety stakeholders. 

David was the expert academic advisor on a World Bank project with PwC Private, India, to develop a plan to convert the Accident Research Institute in Bangladesh into a Centre of Excellence in the South Asian region.

He has worked extensively with the Victorian TAC, providing the evidence base for a range of road safety campaigns, including the award-winning Meet Graham campaign.

Assoc. Prof. Logan also conducts special crash investigations, primarily in the area of passenger car and heavy vehicle crashes, in order to understand the contributing factors leading to their occurrence.  He is currently working closely with the Victorian TAC on the Safe System Crash Investigation Program pilot, assisting with the collection and analysis of more than 30 recent fatal crashes.

He is currently a main or associate supervisor for five PhD students investigating:

• future road trauma benefits of automated vehicles (Iniya Arularasu)
• naturalistic driving (Fletcher Howell)
• optimisation of automated speed and red light enforcement (Mayssaa Mezher)
• child seat safety (Inam Ahmad)
• automated vehicles in mixed traffic (Jiaxin Lu)

• Road safety strategy development and modelling
• Automated vehicles
• Translation of the Safe System to low- and middle-income countries
• Safety of e-scooters and other personal mobility devices

• Chair, MUARC Health, Safety, Wellbeing & Environment (HSWE) Committee