Educational staff

Cycling has been growing in the city of Paris and in its region Île-de-France – this growth is fast, also takes place beyond the city centre, and is bringing many new and inexperienced riders (in 2023, 44% of cyclists had been cycling for less than three years). It was critical to quickly increase road safety for cycling, or this growth would lead to a growth in traffic casualties, and further discourage an important part of the population that can really benefit from cycling (Cycling Cities Barometer found 89% of respondents believe traffic conditions do not allow children to cycle safely).
In France, a significant gender gap remains in cycling: 29% of men cycle regularly compared with only 20% of women, a disparity is largely linked to perceptions of road danger, which highlights the need for continuous, protected cycling infrastructure.
The Île-de-France Cycling Network (VIF) was developed to address this challenge by enabling cyclists to travel on routes that are safe, continuous, easy to follow, and separated from motorised traffic.
The VIF is based on the creation of more than 750 km of high-quality cycling infrastructure crossing 194 municipalities, designed according to six core principles: safety, continuity, comfort, capacity, efficiency, and clarity.
The project directly contributes to the European Commission's Vision Zero objective by applying the Safe System approach, reducing exposure to high-speed motorised traffic, improving the safety of intersections and crossings, and creating a safer road environment for vulnerable road users, including children, women, seniors, and inexperienced cyclists.
Before the project, cycling infrastructure in the region was often fragmented or absent, resulting in unsafe gaps, dangerous intersections, inconsistent signage, and varying quality standards. These shortcomings increased conflicts between cyclists and motor vehicles, particularly affecting vulnerable users such as children, women, seniors, tourists, and new cyclists.
The VIF addresses these issues by creating continuous and protected routes, improving dangerous sections, and eliminating network gaps through a dedicated programme targeting high-risk locations. The results are already visible: according to APUR, the Paris urban planning Agency, women represented 45% of new daily cyclists in 2024, while perceived insecurity remains the main barrier to cycling. This trend illustrates how safer infrastructure can make cycling more inclusive and reduce road safety risks for all users.

Traffic accidents represent a major social problem. In 2025, 93 people died on Slovenian roads, which is 25 more than in 2024. One of the main causes of traffic accidents remains inappropriate speed. The initiative addresses one of the key road safety challenges: how to identify road sections where risky driver behaviour occurs in time, before this is reflected in traffic accidents. Traditional planning of road safety measures is often based primarily on statistics of accidents that have already occurred. This approach is important, but mainly reactive.

The DRAJV Map introduces a more preventive approach. It is based on anonymised and aggregated telematics data from users of the DRAJV mobile application, which detects speeding, phone use or phone movements while driving, harsh acceleration, harsh braking and excessive cornering forces. These data provide insight into actual driver behaviour on individual road sections.

A specific challenge addressed by the initiative is also the lack of a single tool that would connect different road safety data sources. The DRAJV Map therefore combines telematics data on users’ drives, collected through the DRAJV mobile application, publicly available data on the locations of kindergartens and primary schools, and official police statistics on traffic accidents. This enables local communities, schools, researchers, non-governmental organisations and decision-makers to identify risks more comprehensively and to plan measures for safer roads on a stronger data-driven basis.

Road safety begins with how drivers are trained and assessed, and that foundation is broken. In Spain, only 50–60% of candidates pass the practical driving test, and just 27% pass on the first attempt, according to DGT and sector data. The reason is structural: evaluation still relies on manual, subjective and non-reproducible judgement by individual examiners and instructors. This produces inconsistent results between comparable assessments, no traceability or auditability of decisions, and severe bottlenecks, with waiting lists reaching six months in major cities. Crucially, the data generated during training is never exploited to improve learning or prevent risk.
Beyond the test itself, fatigue and distraction remain leading causes of collisions, responsible for between 10% and 25% of road accidents according to the European Commission. Yet professional fleets and training centres lack objective, real-time tools to detect risky behaviour and correct it at source.
Mettis AI addresses these challenges with AI and computer vision that evaluate driver behaviour objectively in real time, removing subjectivity from assessment, standardising criteria, and producing better-prepared, safer drivers, improving road safety from its root: training.

RoadmasterVR specializes in integrating new drivers into large commercial fleets and assessment companies. This is especially critical as a high volume of drivers transition to the EU from third countries like India, Brazil, and the Philippines, frequently facing a steep learning curve regarding EU regulations and driving culture.

By immersing drivers in realistic scenarios, RoadmasterVR accelerates adaptation to potential on-the-road challenges, ensuring a faster, safer, and more environmentally conscious integration process.

Data from five distinct focus groups proves the platform's real-world impact: drivers trained using RoadmasterVR experienced 18.4% fewer accidents over the same timespan compared to those who did not. Depending on fleet size, this reduction not only makes public roads significantly safer but also yields substantial corporate cost savings by drastically lowering insurance premiums and vehicle downtime.