Capacity building and training

Friday, July 14, 2023 - 11:59
Slovenia is a country with a lot of small and very dispersed settlements where public transport does not cover the needs of mobility. 2 million inhabitants have as many as 1.2 million cars. The proportion of older drivers (61+) is 28% and is growing. For elderly, the car is a source of autonomy, mobility and a building block of social inclusion. Drivers in this age group are the most common drivers of fatal accidents, most often in which they die themselves. During their driving career, cars, infrastructure, road rules, driving dynamics have changed and new forms of mobility have developed.
Friday, May 26, 2023 - 11:12
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 - 05:59
Individuals who are blind or have low vision face unique challenges when it comes to navigating our roads. These challenges include not being able to access traditional signage and visual warning signals, not being able to make eye contact with drivers and other road users, veering on crossings or collision with obstacles due to an absence of visual information. The NCBI conducted research and found that 63% of individuals with a vision impairment reported being injured in a public place at least once when navigating outdoors and 59% indicated increases in micro mobility and changes in public space reduced their confidence to walk and access the community. Research also highlighted that despite not having legislation for e-scooters in Ireland, 64.9% of individuals with a vision impairment had experienced a near miss with an E-Scooter on Irish roads.
Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 17:07
The drivers of An Post deliver to over 2 million addresses on a daily basis. Unfortunately, some drivers do not respect the speed limits or do not wear a seatbelt. The campaign also want to create more awareness around vehicle rollaway prevention and safe movement of vehicles.
13 May 2023 10:00 – 10:00
auditorium of the Transport and Communications Directorate of the Athens Central Regional Unit
Greece

Using Social Media for knowledge

we are convinced that technology is essential today to address the lack of social and road culture in many states, not only in the Mediterranean area.  But we wonder if it is not yet possible to intervene with the "older" generations to improve these problems via technology as well.  We could use the social networks Facebook and WhatsApp to distribute easily printable files to report to the authorities on the problems that we as motorcyclists encounter daily on the roads.

Saturday, May 6, 2023 - 19:43
In 2018, an analysis of the causes of road crashes involving pedestrians in the voivodship Małopolskie in Poland found that 68% of such crashes occurred in the vicinity of pedestrian crossings. The Małopolska Voivodship Police Headquarters in Cracow undertook a detailed assessment of the illumination of and road markings at pedestrian crossings for the whole region. The study identified a large number of deficiencies, especially related to illumination. The official statistics confirmed the high risk for pedestrians on pedestrian crossings.
Wednesday, May 3, 2023 - 13:21
Data oriented and supported measures to protect vulnerable road users by understanding behavioural aspects at different infrastructural sections is mandatory for professional and successful pro-active road safety work. Usual data collection within the road safety sector is provided by short-timed data collection by hand or police-initiated reports after crashes happened. For better results in research and infrastructure planning, much more data over longer timespans is needed to provide better understanding on traffic flow mechanics, human behaviour and infrastructural effects on both former topics.
With the Mobility Observation Box (MOB) an image sensor based solution to collect, measure and evaluate trajectory data that integrates seamless into traffic flows without interfering them was developed to overcome the data collection issues. MOB is able to collect data for up to 14 consecutive days on-site with machine learning based post-processing of relevant safety KPIs such as TTC and PET. The technology is battery-powered and can be mounted nearly everywhere due to its lightweight.
Friday, April 21, 2023 - 16:32
1. Right-hand priority rule
1.1 Safety
1.2 Fluidity
2. The roundabout
Functionality
SMART ROUNDABOUT©
3. Parking
3.1. The parking parallel to the axis of the road
3.2. The parking perpendicular to the axis of the road
3.3. The oblique parking on the axis of the road
3.3.1 The parking at a sharp angle to the axis of the road
3.3.2 Parking at an obtuse angle to the road axis
4. Crosswalks: safety, fluidity, slow speed
4.1 The danger when crossing the street
4.2 Intersection blocking
4.3 Intermittent blocking
4.4 The impossibility of applying visible markings
4.5 Geometry of crosswalks, solution for excessive speed
5. Vehicle lights
5.1 The third brake light
5.2 Lights
5.3 Horizontal daytime or position lights
5.4 Signal lights
5.5 The surface and luminous intensity
5.6 Emergency lights
6. Entry and exit lanes, in and out of the highway
6.1 Length of acceleration and deceleration lanes
6.2 Common acceleration/deceleration lanes
7. Road markings and reflective elements
7.1 STOP and Yield markings
7.2 The reflectivity of markings
8. The devices with dispaly inside the cars
9. European technical inspection
10. European vehicle card
11. Final conclusions
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