Future research directions in injury biomechanics and passive safety research

There has been an increasing trend within the safety environment for funding to be directed towards applied research or towards research developing commercially-exploitable systems. Funding mechanisms such as the EU’s 6th Framework Programme and many national programmes focus on research of likely immediate social benefit, reflecting the use of public finances. These programmes will continue to play an important role in funding safety research, but they typically do not have guidelines specifically directed towards fundamental research questions. Additionally, impartial advice is not always available to help programme managers identify research priorities. This review of biomechanics and passive safety research is intended for use by researchers who may be contemplating research in certain areas and wish independent guidance on specific research questions. It is also intended for use by research funding groups and programme managers who would like impartial guidance on basic research to be supported. It covers engineering research directed at improving vehicles and safety systems for all types of road user. It includes the main research and development tools such as dummy development and humanoid modelling and the important area of crash injury data

Identification of road safety risk factors in Africa

The paper presents the results of the analysis of road safety data, collected within the research project "SaferAfrica - Innovating dialogue and problems appraisal for a safer Africa", aiming to support policy makers and stakeholders with evidence on critical risk factors, related actions and good practices drawn from high quality data and knowledge. The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The overall objective is to identify key risk factors affecting road safety in African countries. More specifically, a data organisation and analysis system was developed for the data gathered in order to produce indicators and define critical areas and challenges per topic and region of Africa. The analysis of the data for identifying key risk factors was performed on 5 different topics and priority areas for road safety actions and interventions were highlighted