Critical accident scenarios for cyclists and how they can be addressed through ITS solutions

It is recognised that ITS applications have been relatively successful in improving road safety primarily through technology applications the vehicle and infrastructure. However, Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) have not received as much benefit as other road users. The EC-funded VRUITS project places the VRU road user at the centre, assesses the impact 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. A major focus of the VRUITS project involves the safety of cyclists within the EU as a target VRU group. To provide the evidence-base for ITS applications, data were analysed to determine critical scenarios for cyclists and these data included national data in Spain, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This analysis was matched to analysis of the European CARE data to determine the consistency between the national and European databases. The main findings from the data analysis are as follows; • The majority of cycling accidents in the accident analysis were found to occur at junctions/intersections. • One of the most common scenarios involved vehicles pulling out into the path of the oncoming cyclist at an intersection • CARE data suggests that the most common scenario involves both cyclist and vehicle heading in the same direction but the vehicle then turns into the cyclist’s path • Overall, males are over-represented in the data. • The majority of the accidents occur in fine dry weather during daylight hours • The majority occur in urban areas at relatively on roads with relatively low speed limits Data from this phase of the VRUITS project will be used to determine the ITS solutions that are relevant to the scenarios determined through accident analysis. Subsequent phases of the project will look at the feasibility of implementation of theses countermeasures which is likely to include some pilot testing of specific applications

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] D2.2 assessment methodology

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 accelerate deployment of such ITS. This deliverable reports on the needed modification and development of methodologies to assess the impacts of ITS applications for VRUs in the domains of safety, mobility and comfort and cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Safety assessment estimates the potential reduction in fatalities and injuries to VRU as a result of ITS applications for VRUs. Mobility and comfort are relatively new impact areas for study. The definition of mobility used in VRUITS is: Mobility is considered any form of outside (out of house) movement based on the identified soft transport modes: walking, cycling or motorcycling. These forms of movement are defined by trips from a starting point to a destination in order to conduct an out of house activity. Thus, the mobility impact assessment investigates the changes in the movement out of house (trips, length of trips, etc.) that are the result of the use of an ITS applications for VRUs. VRUITS uses the definition of comfort from Slater: “(...) a pleasant state of physiological, psychological, and physical harmony between a human being and the environment” (Slater, 1985: p. 4). Thus, the challenge in VRUITS is to assess comfort impacts as a result of the use of ITS applications by VRUs. Finally, the CBA monetises the quantified impacts (safety, mobility and comfort) to calculate the Benefit-Cost ratios. An analysis of the sub-groups of VRUs, presented in this report, forms the basis for determining which criteria the impact assessment methodologies must meet. This analysis also illuminates the data necessary as inputs to the impact assessment methodologies. For each impact assessment area, the state-of-the-art is presented. Each impact assessment area describes the required modifications to the methodology selected for use in the VRUITS project, to meet the demands of the VRU sub-groups as well as the ITS applications selected for analysis in the VRUITS project

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”