The 2016 Information Day on the Horizon 2020 ‘Smart, green and integrated transport’, which addressed potential applicants to the Horizon 2020 ‘Smart, green and integrated transport’ calls for project proposals under the 2016-2017 Work programme, took place on 28 September 2016 in Brussels. Prof. Pete Thomas from Loughborough University was invited as the coordinator of the SafetyCube project and presented the basic steps of preparing a successful proposal.

The presentation is currently available:

SafetyCube Horizon 2020 Information Day 2016 Thomas

On September 1-2, 2016, SafetyCube organised at KVF headquarters in Vienna two internal workshops for the coordination of key SafetyCube activities.

The first day, the codification of risk factors and measures concerning road infrastructure safety was thoroughly discussed and the deadlines to complete the risk factors codification process (data base and synopses) are expected to be properly met (end of October 2016).

The second day, a thorough discussion on the development of the Safety Decision Support System (DSS) took place, and the first phase DSS design was finalised allowing the start of the implementation phase.

A presentation of the European Decision Support System (DSS) being developed within the SafetyCube Project was given by Prof. Pete Thomas at the 7^th ESAR Conference, which was held on 9-10 June 2016 in Hannover. The background, methodology and design principles of the European DSS were described.

The presentation and the related paper are currently available:

Pete Thomas ESAR SafetyCube DSS

SafetyCube ESAR 2016 Full Paper

Part of the SafetyCube project activities is to explore collaboration with other Horizon 2020 projects funded in the same call in 2014. During the TRA conference held in Warsaw, SafetyCube initiated an informal meeting of the five project teams: XCYCLE, InDeV, SENIORS, PROSPECT, and SafetyCube. The results of the meeting and an associated conference session is documented in SafetyCube deliverable D1.1 “Collaboration with other H2020 projects”.

The deliverable provides presentation material from all projects and describes the initial collaboration activities among the projects. The earlier collaboration between SafetyCube and InDeV on injury costs will continue and should expand to also include methodologies to investigate underreporting of serious injuries.

Plans for further liaisons for the project groups includes:

1. A joint session to present the projects to be held at the International Cycle Safety 
Conference in Bologna in November 2016
2. Invitations to WP Leaders from other projects to attend the SafetyCube Mid-term 
workshop to take place in Brussels in September 2016.
3. Further discussions between WP Leaders from SafetyCube and other projects on 
potential areas of cooperation.

The deliverable can be downloaded from:

 D1.1 Collaboration with other projects with presentations

An article on SafetyCube project by Concetta Durso, Project Manager of ERF, was published in the specialised magazine “World Highways”.

The general framework of the SafetyCube project and its objectives were presented. Focus was given to the SafetyCube Stakeholder Workshop which took place in Brussels in February 2016. The objectives and the activities during the Workshop were presented and the expected outcomes and future developments were discussed.

The article is currently available:

SafetyCube Road Safety for Policymakers World Highways March 2016

On February 22^nd, 2016, the SafetyCube project held a workshop for European road infrastructure stakeholders in Brussels. The objectives of the workshop were to present the project activities to date and plans for the coming research steps, and to receive feedback from stakeholders concerning:

• user needs for the DSS to make it useful – also over time: what information is needed? how should it be presented? how could the system be accessed?, etc.
• “hot topics” on infrastructure safety so that the DSS addresses key issues, e.g. policy and research priorities, areas in need of cost-benefit analysis or evidence, etc.

The workshop started with presentations of the SafetyCube project and the SafetyCube approach on road infrastructure risks and measures. Then, during a discussion session, the participants gave detailed feedback on their wishes and questions on the DSS. Thereafter, the participants were asked to prioritize the infrastructure “hot topics”. This was done on five posters showing the “hot topics”. The workshop concluded with a synthesis of the discussions.

The collected feedback is very important for SafetyCube and our further work and we would like to thank all participants for their contribution.

Minutes and presentations from the day are available below.

SafetyCube Workshop Brussels February 2016 Agenda

SafetyCube Workshop Brussels February 2016 Minutes

SafetyCube Workshop Brussels February 2016 Infrastructure Risk Factors and Measures

SafetyCube Workshop Brussels February 2016 Synthesis

The SafetyCube project was presented by Eleonora Papadimitriou at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 95th Annual Meeting, which was held in Washington, D.C., in 10-14 January 2016. The presentation included the main objectives, as well as the general concept of the SafetyCube project and the related European Road Safety Decision Support System under development.

The presentation is currently available:

 SafetyCube TRB Presentation Papadimitriou

The results of the Survey on Road Safety Priority Topics ranking per category are available below and are constantly updated:

Read more →

On 10 November 2015, SafetyCube’s behavioural, infrastructure and vehicle experts gathered in Gothenburg to receive an in-depth training for coding road safety literature. The coding exercise is the basis for an evidence-based, quantified overview of risk factors in road traffic as well as the effectiveness of countermeasures. This will be one of the main building blocks of the Decision Support System, SafetyCube’s main outcome.

The training, supported by extensive written guidelines, focused on the many research designs that are used in road safety studies, their potential biases and, hence, the conclusions that can be drawn or cannot be drawn from a study. Within SafetyCube’s methodology workpackage an interactive excel-based coding template had been developed which ensures a uniform way of coding different studies in different areas of interest. That way it will be possible to perform overall quantitative analyses over studies that are otherwise hardly comparable. First results are planned to become available late autumn 2016.

Serious road injuries and their costs are dealt in Work Package 7. The main objectives are to:

1. Assess and improve the estimation of the numbers of serious road injuries (Task 7.1)
2. Determine and quantify health impacts of serious road injuries (Task 7.2)
3. Estimate economic and immaterial costs related to serious road injuries (Task 7.3)
4. Identify key risk factors related to serious injuries and their health impacts (Task 7.4)

The first months of the project we have been working at Tasks 7.1 and 7.2.

Regarding Task 7.1 we decided at the kick-off meeting to tune our activities as much as possible to activities of for example the CARE experts group, IRTAD and FERSI. Instead of circulating our own questionnaire, we will make use of existing information as much as possible and we will focus our attention on completing the information for all EU countries. On the basis of results from case studies, analyzing data from Spain, The Netherlands, the UK, France, Belgium and Slovenia, we will provide guidelines for the determination of the number of serious road injuries. On the moment we are working on a proposal for the research questions that should be answered by the case studies.

Regarding Task 7.2, we discussed a format for case studies describing health impacts of (serious) injuries during our Telcon in September. We are now working on these case studies, including information from France, Germany, Spain, the UK and Belgium.