Belgium

Wednesday, July 3, 2024
Young pedestrians and cyclists are vulnerable in traffic. Crash figures show that children and young people are more likely to be victims of road crashes when they start to travel independently and/or switch to a new means of transport with which they have less experience. Among young pedestrians and cyclists in Flanders, the number of road casualties increases from the age group of 6 to 11 years. Specifically among young cyclists, this increase continues in the age group of 12 to 15 years.
In the past, traffic safety and mobility education in primary education in Flanders was often limited to theoretical lessons on knowledge of traffic rules and traffic signs, usually for the age group of 6 to 12 years. With our practice-oriented pedestrian and bicycle certificates, we want to provide practice-oriented traffic safety and mobility education from kindergarten onwards (2.5 years).
Sunday, June 23, 2024
The Mobilidata program addresses the lack of centralized, timely and qualitative real time traffic warnings in the G2B2C ecosystem.

To fulfil the need of road users to receive and be able to cooperate with (return) real time traffic warnings, Mobilidata implemented for the entire Flanders- region and on the entire public road network the European defined C-ROADS standardized Cooperation model of C-ITS or Cooperative ITS. In Mobilidata 31 different use cases are addressed – see overview of all use cases under 7.2 -images

Mobilidata is the Flanders hub where real time road safety related information comes together from these sources:
• Governmental regional and local level: e.g. roadside infrastructure like traffic controllers, variable message signs,
• Private/corporate level: e.g. Directive 2010/40/EU, EU specified SRTI (safety related traffic information) - vehicle sensor based real time warnings.
• Road user ‘community’ based: Events reported, and event feedback generated by road users.

Each of these 3 source information systems has its strengths and weaknesses, offering a neutral environment where they can be combined and distributed to all interested in a non-commercial setting is possible in a road-safety promoting context.

Road safety information in Mobilidata can be clustered in 3 subgroups per topic in the 29 on-street use case list + an extra subgroup of 2 off-street policy related use cases:
• Road regulation & policies
• Warnings / dangerous situations
• Connected infrastructure / traffic lights
7 October 2024 09:00 – 10 October 2024 17:00
Belgium
19 June 2024 12:00 – 16:00
Norway House
Belgium
18 June 2024 08:00 – 21 June 2024 17:00
't Kuipke & Floraliënhal
Belgium
14 March 2024 17:30 – 18:15
La Bellone
Belgium
2 April 2024 10:00 – 5 April 2024 11:30
The Square
Belgium
Friday, May 26, 2023
In Belgium, as in Europe and large parts of the Western world, life expectancy is ever increasing. While this "aging" is made possible by very comprehensive preventive or curative health care, this certainly does not eliminate all the cognitive or motor impairments associated with aging. In addition, older people are also becoming increasingly mobile, and more specifically, they are using their own vehicle or car up to a higher age.

As people age, two risks that are often used in the context of road safety become important:
- Accident risk: the likelihood to be involved in an accident.
- Injury risk: the likelihood of injury, given an accident has occurred.

With this product, the senior selfTest, we focus on the triggers for accident risk with senior drivers.

Safe participation in traffic, in the context of an ageing population, presupposes two things: "driving skills" and "fitness to drive". Driving skills are strongly linked to learning processes, gaining experience, vehicle control and traffic insight. Fitness to drive has more to do with the physical and mental abilities of the driver: health, sensory and cognitive abilities, influence of alcohol, drugs or medication, etc.

Older road users usually have a very extensive mobility and traffic experience, and associated with that generally overall good driving skills. However, as drivers age, some of the mental and/or physical capacities needed to put those skills to good use gradually decrease. In other words, fitness to drive decreases. Examples are: reduced vision (sharpness, night blindness, etc.), poor hearing, higher reaction times, reduced muscle control or muscle strength, etc.

This decline in capacities is likely to proceed in two speeds. For most people it can be expected that this is a gradual process, which may also be partially absorbable or slowed down. Barring sudden illness and accidents, the decline in physical or mental functionality is a process of several decades. However, when looking at the oldest age categories, it can be expected that a quicker decrease in physical or mental functionality occurs as a result of (a higher likelihood of) more grave illnesses.

Although road users compensate for this natural decline in capacities to some extent (e.g. by driving less at night, driving slower, etc.), there is still a general risk that one's own skills and fitness to drive will be overestimated, or that a decline in skills and suitability will eventually go too fast. In other words, if a self-regulating compensation mechanism is used, it may not be enough to continue to drive “safely”. Different supporting measures need to be developed if we wish senior drivers to truly remain independently safely mobile.

With the SelfTest we present a product that aims at increasing awareness with senior drivers on the importance of psycho-cognitive factors and their own capacities in relation to accident risk, and therefor safe and comfortable driving.

The SelfTest, its development and use is described in the paragraph “project activities”.
The relevance towards improving road safety, compared to other actions taken to support safe driving by senior drivers, is described in the paragraph “evaluation”
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Unsafety is the main reason for people not to cycle. What makes cycling unsafe? It can be due to both objective elements such as inappropriate infrastructure, but also subjective elements such as the behaviour of other road users. To get more people cycling, it is important to locate, identify and address both elements.
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Mobiliteit is een hot topic. Iedereen heeft er een mening over. Toch hebben mensen soms het gevoel dat ze onvoldoende geïnformeerd zijn om mee te praten in het mobiliteitsdebat en om mee na te denken over concrete oplossingen voor meer gezonde mobiliteit in hun buurt. Mobiliteitsjargon vormt zo een hindernis voor mensen om volwaardig te kunnen meepraten over een thema dat uiteindelijk iedereen aanbelangt.

Tijdens workshops, inspraakmomenten en begeleidingen met burgers kan je er niet zomaar vanuit gaan dat iedereen mee is met dat mobiliteitsjargon. Woorden als sluipverkeer of parkeermanagement krijgen al snel verschillende invullingen. Daarom besliste Mobiel 21 om enkele moeilijke woorden op een heldere manier uit te leggen in een reeks laagdrempelige en informatieve video’s met de naam ‘Mobiliteit voor Dummies’. Daarin geeft Glenn Godin, medewerker bij Mobiel 21 en verkeersdeskundige, met een grappige draai en de nadruk op duurzame oplossingen, een antwoord op vaak gestelde vragen. In een reeks met 7 verschillende filmpjes legt hij telkens een ander mobiliteitsbegrip op een heldere manier uit. De onderwerpen van de filmpjes zijn: De knip, fietsstraat, verkeer, schoolstraat, sluipverkeer, parkeren en wegencategorisering. Het zijn stuk voor stuk begrippen die vaak ter sprake komen, bijvoorbeeld wanneer gemeenten hun burgers betrekken bij de opmaak van nieuwe mobiliteitsplannen.

‘Mobiliteit voor Dum­mies’ kwam tot stand met de ste­un van ‘All 4 Zero’. Met dat project willen de ver­schil­lende over­he­den in Bel­gië het aan­tal ver­keers­do­den in ons land tegen 2050 terug­bren­gen tot nul. All 4 Zero betrekt burg­ers actief in het ver­beteren van de ver­keersvei­ligheid, onder meer via een nationale enquête en the­ma­tis­che burg­er­pan­els. All 4 Zero moedigt ook lokale ini­ti­atieven aan om hun eigen straat, buurt of gemeente ver­keersveiliger te mak­en. Net daarom is het zo belan­grijk dat iedereen kan meep­rat­en over mobiliteit. En daar draagt onze reeks ‘Mobiliteit voor Dum­mies’ toe bij.
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