Autonomous vehicle validation - are we just guessing or can we predict the future?

At present there exists no standardised, systematic or structured methodology for the validation of autonomous pod vehicles. The lack of process is compounded by minimal real-world collision or near miss data covering this vehicle type. This gap in knowledge may present a significant obstacle in autonomous pod vehicle development and consumer uptake from two sides; firstly, the scarcity of data for road safety practitioners to develop into appropriate test scenarios and secondly the lack of perceived transparency by the OEMs could form the perception that there is negligible vehicle development and manufacturer accountability, resulting in lack of trust from the end users. To counter this knowledge gap this paper aims to provide more information on initial steps into the definition of a systematic reference dataset which reflects both autonomous pod use and the capabilities of the vehicles to be tested. Due to the lack of real world data in the short term, it will be necessary to develop vehicle validation scenarios for autonomous pods based entirely on non-autonomous collisions of comparable vehicle types. Although there are currently no specific well-tested frameworks to follow, the approach discussed applies proven methodological principals from the field of general product design which assumes that if the design envelope is set correctly then any product that meets this, no matter how outlandish, will be valid

Research into the safety of London bus passengers

Key recommendationsReduce harsh braking and acceleration incidents; • Encourage the use of forward collision warning systems to assist drivers negotiating congested traffic; • Enable passengers to sit down before bus pulls away from bus stops; • Encourage passenger behaviour change using nudge techniques or additional information sources to enable them to stay seated until the bus has completely stopped before alighting; • Encourage passengers to routinely hold onto grab-rails and seat rails whilst sat down; • Raise awareness of the impact of a driver’s behaviour and decision making on a passengers psychological and physical well-being through driver empathy training; • Review the issue of the ‘open’ forward-facing seats into the wheelchair / buggy area to prevent passengers being thrown out of them in instances of harsh braking; • Consider evaluating and increasing running times in the off peak-periods to enable drivers to accommodate the needs of older passengers to reach a seat on boarding and remain seated until fully stopped for alighting the bus; • Promote the needs of drivers and passengers to increase the dialogue on buses and raise awareness of expected behaviours e.g. passengers must always hold on to handrails; • Consider policy changes to enhance driver behaviour; particularly to not pull away until passengers are sat down; always kneel the bus and wait until bus has stopped before passengers stand to alight; • Potentially consider gamification of bus drivers to rate their driving and provide award

Burden of injury of serious road injuries in six EU countries

BACKGROUND: Information about the burden of (non-fatal) road traffic injury is very useful to further improve road safety policy. Previous studies calculated the burden of injury in individual countries. This paper estimates and compares the burden of non-fatal serious road traffic injuries in six EU countries/regions: Austria, Belgium, England, The Netherlands, the Rhône region in France and Spain. METHODS: It is a cross-sectional study based on hospital discharge databases. POPULATION: of study are patients hospitalized with MAIS3+ due to road traffic injuries. The burden of injury (expressed in years lived with disability (YLD)) is calculated applying a method that is developed within the INTEGRIS study. The method assigns estimated disability information to the casualties using the EUROCOST injury classification. RESULTS: The average burden per MAIS3+ casualty varies between 2.4 YLD and 3.2 YLD per casualty. About 90% of the total burden of injury of MAIS3+ casualties is due to lifelong consequences that are experienced by 19% to 33% of the MAIS3+ casualties. Head injuries, spinal cord injuries and injuries to the lower extremities are responsible for more than 90% of the total burden of MAIS3+ road traffic injuries. Results per transport mode differ between the countries. Differences between countries are mainly due to differences in age distribution and in the distribution over EUROCOST injury groups of the casualties. CONCLUSION: The analyses presented in this paper can support further improvement of road safety policy. Countermeasures could for example be focused at reducing skull and brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and injuries to the lower extremities, as these injuries are responsible for more than 90% of the total burden of injury of MAIS3+ casualties

SaferWheels study on powered two-wheeler and bicycle accidents in the EU - Annex 6 case summaries

SaferWheels study on powered two-wheeler and bicycle accidents in the EU - Annex 6 case summarie

SaferWheels study on powered two-wheeler and bicycle accidents in the EU - Final report

Road Safety remains a major societal issue within the European Union. In 2014, some 26,000 people died and more than 203,500 were seriously injured on the roads of Europe, i.e. the equivalent of a medium town. However, although there are variations between Member States, road fatalities have been falling throughout the EU. Over the last 20 years, most Member States have achieved an overall reduction, some more than 50%. During this period, research on road safety and accident prevention has predominantly focused on protecting car occupants, with significant results. However, at the same time the number of fatalities and injuries among other categories of road users has not fallen to the same extent, indeed, in some cases, they have risen. The “Vulnerable Road Users” (VRUs) in particular are a priority and represent a real challenge for researchers working on road safety and accident prevention. Accidents involving VRUs comprised approximately 48% of all fatalities in the EU during 2014, with Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs) comprising 18% and cyclists comprising 8% of the total numbers of fatalities. The Commission adopted in July 2010 its Policy Orientations on Road Safety for 2010-2020. One of the strategic objectifies identified by the Commission is to improve the safety of Vulnerable Road Users. With this category of road users, motorcycle and moped users require specific attention given the trend in the number of accidents involving them and their important share of fatalities and serious injuries. The SaferWheels study was therefore conducted to investigate accident causation for traffic accidents involving powered two-wheelers and bicycles in the European Union. The objective of the study was to gather PTW and bicycle accident data from in-depth crash investigations, obtain accident causation and medical data for those crashes, and to store the information according to an appropriate and efficient protocol enabling a causation-oriented analysis. The expected outcomes were: - Collection of accident data for at least 500 accidents of which approximately 80% would involve Powered Two–Wheelers and the remainder bicycles. Equal numbers of cases were to be gathered in six countries; France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK. - In-depth investigation and reporting for each of the accidents on the basis of the data collected. - Description of the main accident typologies and accident factors. - Proposal of most cost-effective measures to prevent PTW and bicycle accidents

Identification of key risk factors related to serious road injuries and their health impacts, deliverable 7.4 of the H2020 project SafetyCube

Because of their high number and slower reduction compared to fatalities, serious road injuries are increasingly being adopted as an additional indicator for road safety, next to fatalities. Reducing the number of serious road injuries is one of the key priorities in the EU road safety programme 2011- 2020. In 2013, the EU Member States agreed on the following definition of serious road traffic injuries: a serious road traffic injury is a road traffic casualty with a Maximum AIS level of 3 or higher (MAIS3+). One recommendation created by the EU SUSTAIN project was to conduct “A more detailed study of the causes of serious road injuries, [which] could reveal more specific keys to reduce the number of serious injuries in the EU”. This recommendation is addressed through the identification of crashrelated causation and contributory factors for selected groups of casualties with relatively many MAIS3+ casualties compared to fatalities and groups with a relatively high burden of injury of MAIS3+ casualties. This deliverable is made up of two parts brought together in order to determine the main contributory factors detailed above. This two-step approach initially identifies groups of casualties that are specifically relevant from a serious injury perspective using national level collision and hospital datasets from 6 countries. Following the determination of groups of interest a detailed analysis of the selected groups using indepth data was conducted. On the basis of in-depth data from 4 European countries the main contributory and causal factors are determined for the selected MAIS3+ casualty groups. Alongside the three proceeding deliverables that have formed the major outputs of WP7, deliverable D7.4 is aimed at addressing serious injury policy at an EU levels. As such this report is broadly aimed at policy makers although the inclusion of results from in-depth data analysis also provides information relevant to stakeholders, particularly those working in vehicle design and manufacture or road user behaviour

Physical and psychological consequences of serious road traffic injuries, deliverable 7.2 of the H2020 project SafetyCube

SafetyCube aims to develop an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS) that will enable policy-makers and stakeholders to select the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities. Work Package 7 of SafetyCube is dedicated to serious road traffic injuries, their health impacts and their costs. This Deliverable discusses health impacts of (serious) road traffic injuries

Road junctions may cause problems for the safe co-existence of automated vehicle and certain vulnerable road users

This is a conference paper on automated vehicles and certain vulnerable road users.</p

Final report on POD test scenarios & performance requirements. Deliverable 4.1.4 of the Capri project

The aim of the Capri project was to deliver a pilot scheme for the use of automated and connected passenger transport ‘pods on demand’ (PODs) as a mobility service in ‘campus’ locations such as airports, hospitals, business parks, shopping and tourist centres. These areas may be entirely privately owned or comprise elements of both off-road and public highway usage. Four trials have taken place during the Capri project; the first in an off road site closed to the public, two further on private off-road land that are open to the public, and the fourth trial operating as dual mode with the pod demonstrating use in public areas both off-road and on a privately owned road. A key part of the project was to build user and regulatory trust in these vehicles. A major concern of end users is whether or not autonomous vehicles (AVs) will be safe, which is why Work Package 4 of the Capri project was tasked with developing a robust verification and validation (V&V) process to assess the safety of the Capri POD. Primarily this V&V was done in simulation in a virtual world, and the role of Loughborough University was to design test scenarios for use in these simulations. Additionally, throughout the project it became clear that real-world physical safety testing was also required to reassure any concerns over carrying out the public trials. Although the PODs are thoroughly tested in-house by the manufacturer, Westfield Technology Group, Loughborough was asked to carry out further pre-trial testing to provide an independent evaluation of the safety performance. Detailed test plans for physical testing were created by combining the scenario generation methodology we had already developed for virtual testing, alongside our expertise in carrying out road accident investigation, real-world vehicle trials, and studies of driver behaviour. The scope of this report is to give insight into the scenario design methodologies that were developed by Loughborough throughout the Capri project, and how this methodology was utilised to generate scenarios for both virtual and physical validation of the POD. The AV sector has at times been criticised for not being transparent, leading the public to question if safety concerns are being hidden from them. It is hoped that by making this information available for Capri and demonstrating the robust safety assurance procedures that were followed during the project, that end users will gain more confidence in the safety of the technology. Section 2 of this report gives the reader some background information on AV development as well as some of the current procedures for testing and safety assurance for other AV types. Section 3 goes into detail on the process for designing scenarios, including the challenges, the methods developed within Capri to overcome these, and the data sources that can be used in scenario development. Finally, the specific testing protocols utilised for assessing POD performance in the virtual and physical worlds are respectively given in Sections 4 and 5. It is noted here that the testing protocols for the physical testing included in this report are significantly more detailed than those for the virtual testing. This is because the physical testing was carried out by Loughborough, so the protocols cover the implementation as well as the scenario design. For the virtual world, implementation was carried out by other partners in WP4, so only the scenarios and test parameters are described. Further information on how the simulations were carried out can be found in reports from T&VS, the University of Bristol, and the University of the West of England. Furthermore, safety concerns and testing procedures relating to cyber security were not within the scope of this report. This element was covered in detail by the University of Warwick and Nexor

Improving the safety of London buses through design

Over 5.04 billion bus passenger journeys were made in Great Britain in one year (2015-2016), and around half of the bus passengers in the UK are passengers of London buses. In 2015, 1,594 bus and coach occupant casualties were reported by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). However, some 6,096 incidents not requiring police intervention were also reported by London’s Bus Operators to Transport for London (TfL) in 2016, suggesting that there is a more of a problem of passenger injury than is suggested by the MPS figures. In this study, quantitative data was analyzed to derive a better understanding of the nature and circumstances of injuries and how they can be prevented and/or mitigated by design. Additionally, countermeasures were developed in consultation with designers, engineering, human factors and vehicle safety experts. These were then presented to stakeholders to determine priority solutions i.e., those that would have the most impact on preventing bus occupant injuries together with the feasibility of implementing them. Five years-worth of police collision data were analyzed in total The data identified that bus accidents in the London area resulting in reported bus passenger injuries had increased during a five-year period, rising from a 31% share of the total STATS19 bus accidents in 2012 to 44% in 2016 Department for Transport, 2017). Most passenger injury incidents resulted from noncollision incidents. The data also allowed identification of the passenger position in the bus in one of four categories which can help to identify the bus movement at the time of the incident. The analysis identified that alighting and boarding mainly occurs when the vehicle is “waiting to go”, “parked” or “moving off”. However, injuries sustained while seated, which on average represent 41% of the casualties, most often occurred when the vehicle is “going ahead” or “slowing / stopping”. Standing injuries, which account for half of the total casualties, occurred most frequently when the vehicle was “slowing / stopping”, “going ahead”, or “moving off”. </p