Parents

The challenges we were addressing included:
1. An increase in road fatalities and serious injuries on Irish roads
2. A high number of fatalities in urban areas (between 2018 and 2022 27% of fatalities occurred on an urban road, while 53% of serious injuries occurred on an urban road?
3. Moderate public and political support for lower default speed limits in urban areas. 68% of adults said they would be in favour of them on one or more road., There was only three in situ at the campaign's inception.
Research shows the high risk of speed when a pedestrian or cyclist is hit at 50km/h they have a 50% chance of living or hit at 60kmh, and that chance drops to 10%.
Our challenge was to develop a 30k town campaign to raise awareness of the benefits of a lower default speed limit in urban areas in a bid to garner public support for the implementation of an increased number throughout the country and thus help lower road fatalities and serious injuries in urban areas.
The video shows safe interaction between a number of road users to raise awareness of how lowering the speed limit in urban areas can lead to safer, greener, more livable towns and communities.

Governments and administration need to do more to improve road safety. But, the statistics for road traffic accidents are still shocking. Around 90% of all road accidents are caused by human error. That means every year, about a million people die because of other people's mistakes, carelessness, or irresponsibility. So it makes you wonder, are we doing good enough for road safety? Safe Driving, aims to help and informing whole road users about every single issue in Road Traffic from A to Z.

Asociatia Drum Sigur analyzed and researched the following design errors:
- incorrect use of signs for yielding priority in intersections (Give Way and Stop signs) (error found in most countries of the world)
- the formulas used to calculate the length of acceleration/deceleration lanes at road junctions are incorrect (they do not take into account the impact of heavy vehicle traffic, as well as the volume of traffic flows) (error found worldwide)
- the use of staggered pedestrian crossings at traffic lighted intersections has negative effects on pedestrian traffic in most cases. (case analysis for all the staggered pedestrian crossings in Bucharest)
- identification of design and execution errors for T-type intersections, roundabouts, turbo-roundabouts or interchanges in some cities in Romania.
- analyzing some design errors on certain streets in Bucharest and proposing measures to improve road safety and traffic flow.

Our experience shows that most road accidents are caused by human error. Various analyses carried out by ALSA show that most road accidents are caused by inappropriate driver behaviour.
In order to manage road safety proactively, it is necessary to have a detailed and rigorous knowledge of the performance and behaviour of each driver in order to know their skills and behaviours, as well as to track their evolution over time.
To this end, ALSA has invested in technology in more than 3,700 vehicles in Spain that allows us to measure speeding, monitor various parameters that reflect driving style and detect various driver behaviours using innovative smart camera technology.
These smart cameras are based on "machine vision” and "artificial intelligence" (MV+IA) systems, which allow us to detect 40 types of driver behaviour and are particularly noteworthy for their innovation.
The data provided by the aforementioned technologies is used to calculate the risk profile of each driver. ALSA defines personalised actions for each driver: training, assignment to certain vehicles and routes, greater follow-up and monitoring, etc.
In addition, each driver has access to the data available on their own performance through an internal app (called "MiAlsa"). In this way, drivers can consult information on their own performance (consumption, driving styles, speeding, incidents, etc.).

The ultimate road safety problems addressed by the LEARN! project are the road deaths and injuries among children, with the project’s aim to address this problem through improving traffic safety and mobility education in Europe. The LEARN! project contributes to addressing this road safety problem by focusing on the challenges faced by road safety education professionals. During the first European Traffic Education Seminar in 2017, the attending professionals identified several challenges. Firstly, as also confirmed in the LEARN! Status Report, there are vast differences in the quality as well as quantity of the road safety education received by children across Europe, both in terms of differences between countries and between levels of education. Secondly, the lack of a common European terminology and methodology for educational activities on road safety, which was a barrier to learn from, compare and discuss educational projects and activities from different parts of Europe. Thirdly, the lack of a European platform where experts and professionals could exchange, share and learn about best practices related to the improvement and implementation of road safety education, innovative and effective educational projects, as well as discuss common challenges with colleagues from across Europe. Starting in 2018, the LEARN! project addresses those challenges through the activities mentioned in point 4.1. Moreover, it has addressed and keeps addressing additional challenges that have been identified over the years, including specific problems that experts from across Europe identified as common when implementing road safety education in schools, as well as ‘thematic’ challenges (e.g. synergizing with sustainable mobility education).

The safety inspections conducted over time on incident-prone areas and the analyses carried out on accident cases through the SISS (Incident Information and Analysis System) present at the Road Safety Competence Center of Rome Capital have allowed for the identification of multiple concurrent elements that can lead to accidents, such as (indicative and non-exhaustive list):
Excessive speed relative to the road's horizontal and vertical characteristics and its context;
Driver distraction due to the use of electronic devices;
Failure to comply with road traffic rules and regulations;
Failure to comply with visibility triangle requirements or minimum safe stopping distances;
Failure to use pedestrian crossings;
Failure to obey traffic signals, either due to a lack of feedback from the signaling system (pedestrian call buttons) or excessively long signal times;
Pedestrian crossings in areas with limited visibility;
Overlap of conflicting functions in the same spaces;
Scooters or bicycles being ridden in pedestrian areas or on sidewalks;
Illegal parking at intersections, on pedestrian crossings, near waste containers, or double parking;

The key objective is to improve the safety of learner drivers and provide a safe driving environment in which learners can practice safe driving skills. In primary research undertaken in 2018, 31% of Advanced Driving Instructors (ADIs) surveyed agreed that the Essential Driver Training programme (EDT) in Ireland did not provide a safe driving environment for learner drivers. Although it is illegal, driving unaccompanied is regularly done by a large percentage of learner drivers. As part of Phase 1 of the Road Safety Strategy (RSS) 2021-2024 a goal has been set to eliminate unaccompanied driving in Ireland by Q4 2024. The Behaviours and Attitudes Survey (2019) found 39% of learner drivers drive unaccompanied. In 2022, 5,929 learner drivers received penalty points for driving unaccompanied.

Ireland has a population of 5.5 million people, on average per year we have 11 fatalities and 45 serious injuries from road collisions with drivers pre-test (2007-2021 data). 80% of fatal collisions involved learner drivers who were driving unsupervised, while 75% of serious injury collisions involved unsupervised learner drivers. We know from research undertaken that collisions involving learner drivers reduce by 80% whilst accompanied. No one should die while learning to drive.

In the Netherlands cycling is the most important way of daily transportation. Sadly, over the past 10 years the amount of bicycle casualties in the Netherlands has increased by 40%, which is expected to increase even more by the popularity of the E-bike. In 2023, 71.000 cyclists were treated in hospitals (60% of all traffic casualties) with 12.500 having traumatic brain injury (16%). Traumatic brain injury often leads to permanent disability as neurons have no or just little recovery potential. A very simple and effective intervention is the voluntary promotion of bicycle helmet with estimated reduction of death 70% and brain injury by 60%. In Denmark, voluntary promotion of bicycle helmets has been very effective in reducing the amount of casualties, especially in children. When we started in 2022 with the first National Day of the bicycle helmet only 2% of the Dutch cyclists were wearing helmets.

From the first of September 2022, MKIF Magyar Koncessziós Infrastruktursa Fejlsztó Zrt took over the operation, maintenance and development of 1,237 km of existing Hungarian expressways.

When analyzing the accidents recorded by our traffic surveillance cameras on domestic expressways, we noticed that it is important to draw attention to traffic safety in our communication (keeping a following distance, observing the speed limit near work areas, protecting our colleagues, early education of children/young adults in safe traffic) and traffic -culture (littering, driving in an egoistic style that endangers others, early education of children/young adults on responsible driving).

In Vienna most parents are afraid to cycle with their kids on the streets because of the lack of proper and continuous infrastructure for bikes. This degenerates the ability of children in Vienna generally reaching an all time low of 17% of children taking a biking license and having over 50% of them fail in the exam due to lack of skill and practical knowledge about road behavior. This further decreases the biking competency of children in secondary school as they don’t have any motivation whatsoever to actually learn biking at a later age. With only 20 km per year of safe biking infrastructure generated and a need for over 300km this creates a gap of centuries while parents wait for safe infrastructure during which biking competencies further deteriorate. the bikebus (Bicibus) provides a method to engage children at the right age to motivate them for biking and educates parents by practicing and by positive example to actually provide a learning opportunity to children, when they actually are prone to learn biking seriously (5-10) This prepares their technical skills so they are ready, when their actual physiology is ready to safely travel through urban traffic alone even without safe infrastructure yet in place.