Potential of ITS to improve safety and mobility of VRUs

ITS Applications have in recent years assisted in reducing the number of fatalities in Europe. However, Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) have not benefited as much as vehicle users. The EU-sponsored VRUITS project assesses the safety and mobility impacts of ITS applications for VRUs, assesses the impacts of current and upcoming ITS applications on the safety and mobility of VRUs, identifies how the usability and efficiency of ITS applications can be improved, and recommends which actions have to be taken at a policy level to improve ITS safety and mobility. This paper describes the results of the first phase of the project, in which the critical scenarios for VRUs are identified starting from accident data analysis, and following a user needs based on focus groups and expert interviews. From this basis, the most promising ITS applications for VRUs are selected according to their potential to address the specific needs of VRUs

Current and future trends in VRU accidents in Europe - why we need ITS solutions

Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) is a collective term used to describe cyclists, motorcyclists, moped riders and pedestrians. This paper describes work undertaken within the EC’s VRUITS project which focuses on reducing VRU accidents through the use of ITS solutions. The paper determines the current accident numbers within Europe for VRUs between the years 2002 and 2012 using the CARE database. Accident forecasting is then applied to predict future accident numbers if current trends continue and no successful countermeasures including ITS solutions are introduced into the Road Transport System. This shows the number of VRU fatalities in 2030 to be almost comparable to those of car accidents since car fatality rates are reducing at a far increased proportion compared to VRUs. The results of the study emphasise why the introduction of effective ITS solutions are necessary to improve the overall safety of VRUs

A headway to improve PTW rider safety within the EU through three types of ITS

Introduction: The current safety situation for Powered Two Wheelers (PTW) within the EU is alarming. According to EU statistics, PTW riders account for 17% of all fatal road injuries in the region and twice as many fatalities per hundred thousand registered vehicles compared with occupants of cars. In recent years, too little attention has been given to Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), including PTW users, in the development of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Therefore, ITS should be developed that consider PTW riders an integral part of traffic; we focus on three systems that we believe have the potential to improve safety among PTW riders, namely Intersection Safety (INS), the Powered Two Wheeler oncoming vehicle information system (PTW2V), and the Vulnerable road user Beacon System (VBS). The present study aims to estimate quantitatively the safety impacts of the selected ITS for PTW riders in the EU-28, once the systems are fully adopted and meet selected future scenarios for 2020 and 2030. Method: An ex-ante method suggested by Kulmala [1] was further developed and applied to assess the safety impacts of ITS specifically designed for VRUs. As suggested by the method, the analysis started by determining the impact mechanisms through which the selected ITS systems affect the safety of PTW riders. Results: According to the main results, all the systems we studied have a positive impact on PTW rider safety by preventing fatalities and injuries. The greatest effects, based on 2012 accident data and full penetration, could be attained by implementing PTW2V (283 fewer yearly fatalities) and INS (261 fewer yearly fatalities). The weakest effect was found with VBS (216 fewer yearly fatalities). Forecasts for 2030, also based on estimated accident trends and penetration rates, confirm an expected edge for INS and PTW2V in terms of safety

Are intelligent transport systems effective in improving the safety of vulnerable road users?

This paper presents the results of safety impact assessment, providing quantitative estimates of the safety impacts of ten ITS which were designed to improve safety, mobility and comfort of VRUs. The evaluation method originally developed to assess safety impacts of ITS for cars was now adapted for assessing safety impacts of ITS for VRUs. The main results of the assessment showed that nine services included in the quantitative safety impact assessment affected traffic safety in a positive way by preventing fatalities and injuries. At full penetration the highest effects were obtained for the systems PCDS+EBR, VBS and INS. The estimates for PCDS+EBR showed the maximum reduction of 7.5% on all road fatalities and 5.8% on all road injuries, which came down to an estimate of over 2,100 fatalities and over 62,900 injuries saved per year in the EU-28 when exploiting the 2012 accident levels adjusted with the estimated accident trends

Impact assessment of its applications for vulnerable road users

The EU-sponsored VRUITS project has prioritized ITS applications which have a potential to improve the safety, mobility and comfort of vulnerable road users (VRUs) and performed a quantitative safety, mobility and comfort assessment for the 10 most promising systems. The assessment methodology addresses not only the direct effects of the systems, but also unintended effects and effects through changes in mobility patterns. The 10 selected ITS were: VRU beacon system, Powered Two Wheelers oncoming Vehicle information, Bicycle-to-vehicle communication, Cooperative Intersection safety, Green wave for cyclists, Pedestrian & Cyclist detection with Emergency Braking, Blind spot detection, Intelligent pedestrian traffic signal, Crossing adaptive lighting and Information on bike rack vacancy. The paper presents the quantitative estimates for the impact on safety, mobility and comfort. The outputs of the impact assessment are translated into socioeconomic indicators via a social cost-benefit analysis

Improving the safety and mobility of vulnerable road users through ITS applications [VRUITS] D7.3 Final Exploitation Plan

This document is the final version of the “Final Exploitation Plan” as created in WP7: Dissemination and Exploitation. The document gives an overview of the exploitable results of the project, analyses the stakeholders interested in the results, and gives the preliminary plans for several partners to ex-ploit the results. Chapter 2 briefly gives an overview of the project results as produced in the other work packages. Chapter 3 lists the stakeholders of the VRUITS project result exploitation. Based on these chapters, in chapter 4 the exploitation details are explored based on three target areas for exploitation of the re-sults; being industrial activities, academic interests, and regulatory norms and standards. From the perspective of industrial activities, one of the benefits of the VRUITS project is the extensive cost-benefit analysis, which can guide specific development activities. In the conclusion, a link is made to the Impact Analysis describing a collection of systems with a positive benefit-cost ratio, as potential starting point for such development activities. Combined with the results from the pilots in the Nether-lands and Spain this leads to technical research and developments for devices specifically targeting vulnerable road users. Examples mentioned of concrete developments triggered by the VRUITS pro-ject include technologies for portable beacons for VRU’s, and VRU-prepared traffic management equipment. From the academic point of view, the expertise gained will be used by the partners through scientific publications, offered as expertise in future offerings, and used when developing future products. The pilot analysis and measurement tools as created in WP3 and WP4 will not be offered as separate products, but these and the setup and results as reported in WP5 also can be used in subsequent (fol-low-up) projects. Norms and standards are relevant for all stake holders, as to enable a sufficiently large market to make developments economically feasible. The VRUITS project has triggered several initiatives with respect to standardisation, however the process of standardisation will continue beyond the life time of the VRUITS project. Here both follow-up projects (e.g. XCYCLE) and industry interest are expected to be sufficient to drive the progress of the standards beyond VRUITS. Next to norms and standards, also other actions at EU level are identified in the VRUITS project, helping towards exploitation of the VRUITS results. These are not covered in this deliverable, but are detailed in deliverable D6.2 “Rec-ommendations for actions at EU level and their assessment”

Instrumented vehicles for detailed tests (deliverable D3.2.3)

The TeleFOT project constitutes the first Field Operational Tests (FOTs) for in-vehicle use of Nomadic Devices in Europe. Inside the project structure, the subproject 3 “Field Operational Tests” (SP3) objective is to design, develop and validate test communities for Field Operational Tests including both large scale and detailed trials. They cover the Northern, Central and Southern Europe. In Subproject 3, a specific activity (Work-package WP3.2) will develop the tools and technologies to enable the conduction of both Large-scale and Detailed FOTs. The objectives are “To setup, adjust and optimize the tools and technologies enabling first the conduction of the pilot tests leading to full-scale tests later on and for the evaluation of the different functions and services concerning their applicability, efficiency and impacts. These include: (i) Test vehicle concept with data logger and communication to M2M system for the tests with a great number of subjects (Large-scale tests) (ii) and the instrumented vehicles for detailed testing and (iii) the communication and data handling system (Machine-to-machine; M2M).