Improve vehicles and infrastructure

Training local authorities, safety auditors, and consultants to understand and implement Safe System principles on Irish road projects. The Safe System approach, which aims to eliminate death and serious injury on roads, requires a fundamental shift in thinking—from blaming individual road users to designing a transport system that anticipates human error and minimizes its consequences. Many professionals involved in road planning and safety in Ireland may not yet be fully familiar with this paradigm or how to apply it effectively in practice. This creates a gap between policy aspirations and on-the-ground implementation. Training must therefore go beyond theoretical understanding; it must equip stakeholders with practical tools, case studies, and methodologies tailored to the Irish context. Additionally, integrating Safe System thinking into all stages of road project development—from planning and design to construction and maintenance—requires cross-sector collaboration and a shared commitment to safety. Overcoming institutional inertia, aligning with existing regulations, and ensuring consistent application across local authorities are further hurdles. Addressing these challenges through targeted education, continuous professional development, and supportive policy frameworks is essential to embedding Safe System principles into Ireland’s road safety culture and achieving long-term reductions in road trauma.

Since the earliest days of the automobile, aquaplaning – when a vehicle loses grip due to a layer of water between the tires and the road – has remained one of the few critical safety challenges still unresolved by today’s technologies. It continues to cause thousands of fatalities annually, and it’s estimated that around 20% of road accidents occur in low-grip conditions, often linked to rain or standing water.
Despite decades of development in passive and active safety systems, no solution currently exists to restore grip once aquaplaning begins. This makes it a persistent threat for all drivers, and a major obstacle to the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles.
The Aquaplaning Intelligent Solution (AIS) by Easyrain addresses this safety gap by actively restoring tire-road contact in real time: the system sprays high-pressure water in front of the front tires to break the water layer causing aquaplaning. AIS is the first system designed specifically to prevent aquaplaning, offering a new layer of safety where existing technologies fall short. While its benefits are immediate for today’s road users, AIS also contributes to the essential safety required to enable autonomous driving in all weather conditions.

The LEDONE Connected project began in early 2021, following the publication of new Spanish regulations promoting connected emergency signaling, specifically through the Real Decreto 159/2021. The objective was to develop a V16 emergency light that would not only meet legal standards but go further in terms of safety, visibility, and connectivity. Sustainability was not a regulatory requirement, but a value deeply embedded in Erum Vial's philosophy and business model.

The first phase focused on R&D, resulting in a high-visibility design (the tallest on the market) with 360° lighting powered by 10 high-intensity LEDs, a dual magnetic/adhesive fixation system for universal vehicle compatibility, and the optional LEDONE Arrow for enhanced lateral visibility in large vehicles.

Erum Vial integrated NB-IoT connectivity provided by Vodafone, ensuring reliable communication with national road safety authorities. Additionally, we developed the LEDONE mobile app to offer real-time connection confirmation, direct access to emergency contacts, and tow tracking tools.

The project followed a phased timeline:

• 2021: Technical research, regulatory analysis, and initial design with a focus on safety, visibility, and integration of IoT.
• 2022–2023: Industrialization of the product in Erum's manufacturing plant in Alcoy, using 100% recycled plastic and applying sustainability practices as a corporate commitment—not due to any regulatory mandate.
• 2024–2025: Full-scale distribution across Spain with more than 20,000 sales points and ongoing collection of field data for product improvement.

Key activities include app development (LEDONE App), firmware updates, user feedback analysis, and public awareness campaigns on connected safety devices. The project is ongoing and ready for European scalability, with continuous improvement based on real-world use and user feedback.

The stagnation of accident and mortality figures in Spain, particularly regarding run-off-road incidents, demonstrates that traditional road safety solutions, while still essential, have reached their maximum possible impact. Road network authorities must therefore immediately commit to new, disruptive, and innovative measures. An urgent response is required to make the European goal of Zero Victims by 2050 achievable, and this response must be supported by solutions that harness the potential of technology and artificial intelligence.
The main pain points are as follows:
1. High accident rate: Worrying levels of accidents, run-off-road incidents, and pedestrian collisions persist, resulting in severe human and economic consequences.
2. Reactive rather than preventive safety: Existing systems intervene only after an incident to minimise its consequences. There are very few real-time risk detection and alert mechanisms in place.
3. Lack of connected response: There are no infrastructure-based solutions capable of automatically detecting incidents or run-off-road events unless incorporated by the vehicle itself, which often leads to critical delays in notifying emergency services or alerting other road users.
4. Limited technological adaptability: Many roads lack basic supplies such as electricity or signal coverage for remote management.
5. Level of investment: While national authorities are progressively beginning to invest in advanced technological solutions, budgets remain limited, often restricted to pilot programmes and trials without genuine commitment. In numerous regional and local administrations, no officials have yet been appointed for road modernisation or digital transformation, and no budgets are allocated for these matters.
6. Digital technological expertise among road administrators: There is a clear shortage of technical profiles with expertise in IT or telecommunications, and public administrations are slow in equipping themselves with such profiles.
7. The challenge of intelligent infrastructure and the connected vehicle: There is an urgent need to seek alternatives to large-scale V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication protocols between vehicles or between vehicles and infrastructure, as these may not prove effective in the short term due to factors such as public investment levels, the gradual renewal of the vehicle fleet, or the complexity of harmonising protocols across manufacturers and countries. Tactical solutions that demonstrate real, immediate impact are critically needed.
These are the principal pain points slowing the advancement of smart road deployment, understood as an entire ecosystem of connected, proactive, and preventive solutions to ensure safe, sustainable, and intelligent mobility.

In Valladolid, one of the main road safety challenges we identified was the safety of children on school routes, especially at intersections with high vehicle flow and limited visibility. Traditional pedestrian crossings, marked only by paint, often fail to capture drivers’ attention — particularly during early morning or late afternoon hours when light conditions are poor, and traffic is dense.

Children, due to their smaller size and unpredictable behavior, are among the most vulnerable road users. Despite the presence of static signage, many drivers fail to reduce speed near school zones, and pedestrians, especially children, faced heightened risks when crossing.

We addressed this issue by implementing the Retrolight System®, an innovative smart crosswalk solution with embedded LED panels and intelligent vertical signage, in one of Valladolid’s key school routes. The system uses real-time sensors to detect pedestrians’ intention to cross and activates dynamic lighting both on the ground and in vertical signs, immediately alerting approaching drivers. By combining active visual cues with automated detection, the system significantly improves pedestrian visibility, raises driver awareness, and ultimately reduces crossing-related risks. This project serves as a replicable model for enhancing safety on school routes across urban environments.

Roadscor tackles critical road safety challenges by shifting from reactive to proactive design evaluation, especially for vulnerable road users (VRUs) at urban intersections. Traditional safety assessments rely heavily on historical crash data or near-miss observations, which are often incomplete or outdated. This limits the ability to anticipate and prevent future incidents. Roadscor introduces a groundbreaking methodology that uses advanced traffic simulation and automotive-grade scenario analysis (aligned with ISO 21448 – Safety of the Intended Functionality) to identify both known and unknown high-risk traffic conflicts - before they occur.

By simulating all physically possible interactions between road users, including pedestrians and cyclists, Roadscor enables traffic engineers to quantify safety risks and evaluate the impact of design changes or behavioral measures prior to implementation. This data-driven approach supports more effective, evidence-based decision-making and helps prioritize interventions where they will have the greatest impact. Ultimately, Roadscor empowers cities and road authorities to design safer, more inclusive infrastructure, accelerating progress toward Vision Zero goals.

More and more trucks on our roads means that the potential for dangerous incidents involving trucks is on the rise. Society’s demand for delivered goods has continued to increase. The net effect is a prediction that global freight demand will treble between 2015 and 2050 (ITF, 2019). Heavy trucks are likely to become more and not less important. Currently, heavy trucks comprise only 1.5% of vehicles on Europe's roads, yet they are responsible for almost 15% of all EU road fatalities. Vision Zero cannot be reached without tackling the challenges presented by trucks on our roads. Euro NCAP believes that fleet managers have the greatest opportunity to make changes on the road and to the safety of their fleets because usually their procurement orders are significant.

Euro NCAP’s new Safer Truck programme looks at a heavy vehicle’s ability to prevent, react, and deal with a possible accident, for example, considering the fitment of technologies for occupant monitoring and safety assistance, as well as good vision. Euro NCAP considers diverse types of scenarios in a collision: frontal, lane departure, and low-speed manoeuvring. Euro NCAP also wants to convince businesses of the economic viability of delivering safety to their fleets, which will lower the number of truck accidents whilst lowering the loss and costs for businesses.

The aim of determining fitness to drive is to achieve a balance between minimising any driving-related road safety risks for the individual and the community and maintaining the driver’s lifestyle and employment-related mobility independence. Driving a car is a complex and dynamic task and there is a wide range of conditions that temporarily affect the ability to drive safely like consuming substances or fatigue. Professional drivers are particularly affected by fatigue. The main effect of fatigue is a progressive withdrawal of attention from the road and traffic demands leading to impaired driving performance. The particular practice of professional drivers include working long hours, prolonged night work, working irregular hours, little or poor sleep, and early starting times which in many cases lead to fatigue. Fatigue causes reduced alertness, longer reaction times, memory problems, poorer psychometric coordination, and less efficient information processing. The results of different surveys world-wide show that over 50% of long-haul drivers have at some time almost fallen asleep at the wheel.

Blind and elderly people are higly vulnerable road users. While cooperating in the Hamburg Teststrecke für Autonomous and Vernetztes Fahren (TAVF), we experienced that their needs are hardly being addressed. Furthermore, projects addressing their needs never seem to go beyond a short project state. The "Routago" map for blind people has gone bankrupt, just like few manufacturerers of e-walkers (e. g. ello).
Blind people's only orientiation is limited to a 80 € cane without any sensors while cars are having lane changing systems, park assistants etc.