Predictive safety assessment framework and safer urban environment for vulnerable road users

A Safe System approach recognises that since accidents will continue to occur despite preventive efforts, it is a shared responsibility between stakeholders (road users, road managers, vehicle manufacturers, etc.) to take appropriate actions to ensure that road collisions do not lead to serious or fatal injuries. The safe system approach requires a systematic, multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, and multi-stakeholder approach which addresses the safety needs of all users; fatal and serious injury prevention, collision prevention and mitigation and post-collision care and aligns with other policies for co-benefits such as health, occupational health and safety, sustainable development and poverty reduction. In a Safe System approach, mobility is a function of safety rather than vice versa. It involves the implementation of system-wide measures that ensure, in the event of a collision, that the impact forces remain below the thresholds likely to produce either death or serious injury.

Area A – Predictive safety assessment framework

The road traffic system is changing with new technology, new means of transport as well as with regulatory and behavioural changes, and so will scenarios which are relevant for safety. Such future scenarios are not yet captured in accident databases. Traditional analysis methods and road studies can no longer predict the impact of new developments and new measures on road safety with an increased speed of technological development, but relatively slow penetration rates in the road traffic system. Also for already developed safety measures, scenarios need to be provided which cover more complex transport system levels where safety can be described in terms of risk and probability due to interplay between societal and technological driving forces as well as different stakeholder and user needs. A predictive safety assessment framework on higher system levels will support considerably the proactive management of road safety as an important principle of the safe system approach.

Virtual simulation allows for fast and extensive evaluation of safety measures even in scenarios which do not exist in real traffic yet. With growing computer power, safety assessment methods should therefore be extended to potential future scenarios and to the transport system level also allowing for the evaluation of socio-economic benefits. Such predictive assessment requires appropriate simulation environments and realistic models of all elements of the transport system (incl. human behaviour and traffic flow), which need to be harmonised to make them available for policy, regulatory and consumer assessment.

Within this context, actions should address the following aspects:

• Develop new methods to efficiently predict the effects of the implementation of a new technology, new means of transport and regulatory or behavioural changes on road safety up to the level of socio-economic benefits.
• Further develop virtual models of the relevant elements of the transport system for which such further development is most urgently needed, and validate them through testing activities and corresponding correlation.
• Analyse, based on selected examples, how the application of new technology and/or the introduction of new regulation will affect the remaining road safety burden, and how traffic and crash scenarios will change with their market penetration and/or enforcement respectively.

Area B – Safer urban environment for vulnerable road users

A safe system strategy and targets to reduce accidents in urban areas inevitably should have at its core the safety of vulnerable road users. Vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists and powered two wheelers) constitute almost 70% of the fatalities from road crashes in urban areas. Our society is characterized by an ageing generation, which is still mobile and more active in road traffic than in the decades before, therefore it is of high importance to improve safety in road traffic for elderly people by seeking solutions that would concomitantly address infrastructure and road user behaviour. A safe system strategy needs also to take into account the interactions between different modes of transport, especially the road intersection with trams, light-rail, commuter rail, including infrastructure and human factors of vulnerable users in relation to level-crossings and trespassing.

In this context, building on best practices (technological, non-technological and social), as well as ongoing projects and planned initiatives in the area of safe urban environment for vulnerable road users, actions should address the following aspects:

• Protection principles and solutions to provide a safe environment for vulnerable road users through infrastructure measures and lifelong learning initiatives for vulnerable road users as well as for vehicle occupants (behavioural change, training courses, road safety education from an early age)
• Identify specific mobility needs and public space design needs to promote a safe journey for the vulnerable road users, and enhance their perception of safety (considering among others women’s perception of safety and people with disabilities, like blind people in shared spaces).
• Safe inclusion of new means of transport into the traffic system (including personal light electric vehicles, PLEVs, such as electric scooters and self-balancing vehicles and the safe transition to higher levels of automation e.g. automated public transport vehicles ). Safety measures on the vulnerable road users’ vehicles, improving stability, robustness and helping to prevent crashes overall.
• Protective equipment (helmets, clothes, reflectors) that is innovative, effective, user friendly and likely to lead to higher usage rates. Possibilities of active equipment able to detect oncoming collisions and warn the VRU in order to prevent crashes should be explored and demonstrated
• Improved detection mechanisms of vulnerable road users by other users and accurate prediction of their behaviour including at road intersections.
• Analysis of the most common causes of accidents concerning vulnerable road users and demonstration of applied solutions.
• Provide clear guidance to cities and Member States/Associated Countries on how to incorporate the vulnerable road users dimension into infrastructure planning and sustainable urban mobility plans especially for the aspects of safety, security and accessibility.

Actions should address the activities EITHER under area A) Predictive safety assessment framework OR under area B) Safer urban environment for vulnerable road users. Proposals should clearly indicate which area they are covering. At the same time, links will ideally be established between projects under both areas, so that solutions, concepts and measures developed under Area B) could be assessed using the framework from Area A).

Typically, projects should have a duration of 36 to 48 months. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations.

Social innovation is recommended when the solution is at the socio-technical interface and requires social change, new social practices, social ownership or market uptake.