How technology is helping road danger reduction

Work is being taken forward on the incorporation of human factors into traffic microsimulation

The EU-funded ‘Predictive Approaches for Safer Urban Environment’ (PHOEBE) Project aims to increase the road safety of vulnerable road users (VRUs), especially those who use active mobility and e-scooters. 

It is building on the strengths of iRAP’s road safety assessment tools and Aimsun’s simulation and Artificial Intelligence to deliver harmonised, integrated and world-leading safety prediction tools that take account of gender, age and ability levels in providing for future mobility.

Pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users face complex road safety challenges navigating daily journeys. The first webinar of the EU Road Safety Cluster was presented in February, attended by more than 90 stakeholders. Even though all six cluster projects have the same aim of reducing crashes and fatalities, each project presented a different facet of road safety innovation:

PHOEBE – developing an integrated, dynamic, human-centred predictive safety assessment framework

SOTERIA – using novel data solutions to identify near misses and other actions around unsafe locations by utilising vehicle-, cell phone and micro-mobility data

AI4CCAM – using a holistic approach to AI to assess automated driving and its user acceptance

HEIDI – enhancing communication between vehicles and vulnerable road users, such as cyclists or pedestrians, by conveying information to both sides of the vehicle (inside and outside)

FRODDO – advancing automated and connected mobility by developing safer, smarter, and more adaptable transportation systems using advanced sensing, AI, and digital twin simulations

EVENTS – focussing on challenges that arise when Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) encounter complex situations that could disrupt their normal operation, such as dynamic traffic changes, harsh weather, sensor failures, or unstructured roads.

A joint PHOEBE-JULIA webinar presented last month highlighted tools, simulations and frameworks for city administrations and urban planners to enhance the safety of vulnerable road users with a specific focus on cycle lanes. POLIS Network, FACTUAL, and iRAP showcased the two Spanish pilots in Barcelona (JULIA) and Valencia (PHOEBE).

The aim of both EU-funded projects is to enhance road safety for cyclists and other vulnerable road users and encourage active mobility to achieve the goal of the European Parliament to ‘double cycling by 2030’ and reach the targets outlined in the European Declaration on Cycling.

The human factor

Traffic flow models used in traffic microsimulation platforms do not commonly consider human factors, especially non-compliant behaviours. While the theoretical need for the incorporation of specific human factors into traffic microsimulation, especially for the purpose of safety assessment, has been shown in previous studies, there is no systematic methodology which can be empirically tested for a wide range of behaviours.

PHOEBE presented at the Annual Meeting of the Transport Research Board (TRB) in Washington DC, USA in January on the joint research efforts of TU Delft, AIMSUN, iRAP and The FLOOW on the incorporation of human factors into traffic microsimulation.