Emergency services

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.

The main road safety challenge that was tackled in this initiative is safety of the pedestrians and drivers on the main street of Põlva. The daily traffic volume on this road segment is high, with approximately 5000 vehicles, including trucks, passing through it every day. Simultaneously, high number of pedestrians use the same road daily to get to work or school. From a traffic safety perspective, this road segment is challenging – the hilly and winding road can distract drivers from speed limits, and the increased prevalence of light vehicles (bicycles, scooters etc) further amplifies the danger of this situation.
Smart Road is a vision of the future street, where all road users are equally preferred, and the emphasis is no longer solely on cars. Smart Road is designed to encourage drivers to objectively consider their traffic behaviour and to pay more attention to vulnerable road users. At the same time, the creators of Smart Road understand that vulnerable road users are indeed more difficult to notice, and effective solutions must be provided to assist drivers in focusing their attention on them.

El desafío es implementar una iniciativa que permite mejorar y poner en práctica acciones que reduzcan los enclaves de concentración de accidentes, recogiendo el propósito de “Avanzar juntos hacia una movilidad segura”, compartiendo y comprometiéndonos a conseguir unos objetivos, desarrollando unas actividades que permite abordar con éxito el problema de la seguridad vial urbana en la Ciudad de Madrid, la segunda Ciudad Europea con mayor población.

Vulnerable road users (VRUs), including pedestrians and cyclists face several significant road safety challenges, especially at the intersections and crosswalks. Poorly designed or marked crosswalks, inappropriate traffic light planning and lack of pedestrian priority measures contribute to higher risks. More particularly, many intersections do not give sufficient priority to pedestrian or cyclists. Short crossing times, lack of adequate pedestrian requests, lack of dedicated pedestrian phases, lack of information providing to the VRUs, and insufficient waiting areas at intersections increase the risk of accidents and put in jeopardy the safe crossing of the intersection. Examining the accidents in intersections has revealed that one of the situations with high accident risk is when a vehicle is performing a right turn at the intersection while a cyclist or pedestrian is crossing the road straight and is at the blind spot of the driver.
Furthermore, the approaching and crossing of an intersection by an emergency vehicle using only the alarm is a critical safety situation for different groups of road users. Firstly, emergency vehicles are facing critical and dangerous situations while getting to the emergency scene time, since drivers do not react immediately to make space and in front of red traffic lights, many drivers wait for "green" instead of carefully crossing the stop line and making room for it. In addition, the vulnerable road users could also be exposed to danger in this scenario. For example, a pedestrian may not be paying attention and hear the alarm too late or it could be a hearing impaired person.

"It is mathematically impossible to drive with the idea of maintaining a safe distance and not causing traffic jams". We need to shift to the paradigm of "maintaining inertia," not distance. And how do we teach this? With a video game! (traffic simulator) In smartphone, in Tablet, in Laptop, in PC...

Road safety is crucial for protecting lives, enhancing economic stability, and improving the quality of life. The global economic impact of road accidents is $1.8Tr or 10-12% of global GDPR. In Europe alone, it is estimated to be €280Bn or 2% of EU GDP. The other side of road accidents is that 1.19M people died on our roads in 2021.
The increasing volume of vehicles and complexity of road networks require innovative solutions to improve efficiency of road traffic management and road safety. The use of advanced data analytics and deep data fusion transform road traffic management through empowering road traffic authorities to make timely accurate and data-driven decisions.

By analysing historical and real- time data from the road and arterials, our advanced data analytics solution deliveries 100% road monitoring coverage, identifies high-risk areas and predict accident-prone situations, allowing traffic authorities to implement pre-emptive measures, such as adjusting traffic signal timings, optimizing traffic flow, or providing timely warnings to road users. This data driven approach significantly reduces the number of road accidents and enhances overall road safety.

Low driving skills after completing driving school and driving exams. Weak evaluation on examine driving tests. Seasonal challenges, where after a winter period, when one starts to drive motorcycles again, the mind knows but body and muscular memory has forgotten vital survival skills. Motorcycle drivers tend to find themselves in an unexpected situations, where they do not know or do not remember how to survive sudden traffic situations. Especially at higher speeds.

According to statistics, road accidents are the leading cause of death for young people, especially in the 18-24 age group. This is a good reason to raise awareness and to leverage the young population.
Many young people and young adults represent an interesting target for awareness campaigns. Not only can they help spreading awareness in society right now, but they are also highly exposed to road risks. Moreover, when properly addressed, younger people are open to learn and to change behaviour.
Motorways, Italian Police and City Authorities decided to reach out to young people by creating a project aimed at road safety culture.
The main goal is to widespread safety culture directly to students and young adults. It is also the opportunity to mobilize a huge number of national, regional and local stakeholders.
Impact and scale: The core of the initiative is made out of 40 events in 6 regions and 20 towns. Organizers expect to reach 10.000 to 20.000 people, ideally 15.000. It’s not just an easy tour of lectures in schools. Strategies for medium/long term engagement are put into practice. A concrete assessment of results is being made.

We are tasking university marketing students to reimagine how road safety is marketed across the country. This is a very difficult task as we have found that a lot of the current marketing campaigns simply do not resonate with the target audience of 18 to 25 year olds. What this project has done is get them to focus on what is currently out there and to come up with new ways to connect with the audience in an effective marketing campaign.