Please describe the main road safety challenges/problems you have addressed or are addressing.
We are addressing several different problems that can be summarized in the sections VI.A to VI.C of the paper attached . In my opinion, the most important problem regarding safety is VI.C: Improve Pedestrian Safety in Urban Scenarios.
Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) is mandatory for all European vehicles manufactured after 2021. ISA uses GPS or optical cameras to detect the speed limit and, in case of overspeed, alert the driver. ISA is a great approach for improving safety, especially pedestrian safety in urban scenarios. The speed limit inside a City is typically 30 km/h. Unfortunately, this speed is still too fast for protecting pedestrians when they are crossing. If a distracted driver arrives at a crossing at 30 km/h, the pedestrian will not have enough response time to avoid the collision. The small infrastructure adaptation that we propose, enables us to set a variable speed limit on every meter of lane stretch. This means that next generation of ISA would adapt the speed on every meter which could be 30 km/h at the beginning of the street but in the surroundings of the pedestrian crossing can be progressively adapted to 20, 10, 6 and 4 km/h when it is just over the crossing. This speed is similar to the speed of the pedestrians and they will have an opportunity to avoid the collision. At the same time, inappropriate accelerations can be avoided with the same approach for reducing pollutant emissions.