Discussion

In 2017, the Connecting Austria project was internationally unique with respect to the special consideration of the infrastructure and traffic perspective as well as the special consideration of investigating an urban truck platooning use case with traffic-light-controlled intersections before and after motorway entrances. The three main target groups of the project were: (1) road operators/infrastructure providers, (2) logistics operators and (3) C-ITS industry. Especially for those target groups and policy maker faced one central question at that point in time —“How can safe truck platooning reduce CO ₂ -emissions and how can this help to strengthen the stakeholders’ role in their market or political environment?”. Cooperative, connected and automated mobility shape the future of road transport. Thereby, truck platooning represents an important application case in the transport logistics domain. In this chapter, the research and evaluation results presented in this book are discussed along the following three fundamental pillars: (1) traffic safety and legal issues, (2) sustainability and (3) truck platooning deployment. Finally, limitations and cultural blind spots experienced within international workshops and discussions in the context of the Connecting Austria project are reflected.