Others

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.

The programme of the Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace was designed to address a wide range of systemic and behavioral challenges identified at both the local and national levels. The main challenges addressed are the following:

Lack of Experiential Education and Dangerous Youth Behaviors: Traditional road safety education was often limited to strictly theoretical approaches. At the same time, a high tolerance for dangerous behaviors was recorded among young people, such as the non-use of seatbelts in rear seats, riding without a helmet, driving under the influence of alcohol or fatigue, and using a mobile phone while driving. We addressed this challenge by introducing permanent simulation equipment (intoxication simulation glasses, crash simulators) to achieve a practical, experiential change in the students' mindset.

Protection of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs): The safe integration of pedestrians, young children, cyclists, and the elderly into the urban environment remains a constant challenge. This problem was tackled through micro-mobility education, the organization of traffic education parks for the issuance of a "Bicycle Driving License", as well as targeted actions tailored for the elderly.

Professional and Freight Transport Safety: The operation of heavy vehicles (trucks and buses) entails significant risks related to driver fatigue, cargo securing, and compliance with driving hours. This challenge was addressed by publishing specialized manuals for professional drivers and providing continuous training to the "Roadside Inspection Teams".

Ignorance of the Highway Code and Anti-social Driving: Phenomena such as illegal parking on disability (ADA) ramps and pedestrian crossings, along with an ignorance of new legal provisions, severely degrade road safety. This problem was approached through direct on-street actions, including the distribution of "warning tickets" and informational material to citizens.

Lack of Digital Data for Decision-Making: The absence of a centralized digital recording system for dangerous incidents, accidents, and road defects hinders targeted planning. This challenge is being addressed through the adoption of the "Pythios" system, which is capable of recording, mapping (via heatmaps), and analyzing data in order to guide and prioritize administrative interventions.

Geographical and Local Constraints: The lack of access to traffic education activities for remote areas constitutes a major inequality issue. The Region addressed this by organizing activities in remote schools in the Prefecture of Drama, in mountainous areas of the Prefecture of Xanthi, as well as conducting special educational interventions in island areas, such as Samothrace.

Although a road collision is over in seconds, its consequences can last for years. In 2025 Czech police investigated 85,518 road crashes, in which 421 people died, 1,647 were seriously injured and 25,013 sustained minor injuries. The official injury count captures only part of the harm. Research indicates that around one in three people seriously affected by a crash develops lasting psychological harm, while only about six per cent seek professional help. Victims, witnesses, bereaved families and drivers responsible for crashes often describe a second injury: impersonal contact with police, insurers, courts and hospitals at the moment they are least able to absorb more stress — an experience they carry for years. Our goal is therefore not only to ease this harm but, above all, to prevent it. This is the prevention that road safety tends to forget: while most measures reduce the number of crashes and physical injuries, we reduce and prevent psychological ones. The Dialogue workshops, the community of affected people and our public counselling all work as prevention, stopping an initial shock from developing into lasting trauma. The Safe System approach behind EU road-safety policy includes this post-crash stage, yet in practice it is the part most often left aside. Our initiative addresses exactly this.

The primary challenge addressed is the legacy, reactive model of urban traffic safety, where city planners traditionally implement safety measures only after a history of collisions is recorded. This approach means infrastructure flaws are identified too late, relying on historical crash data rather than prevention.

Additionally, current methods struggle to ensure equity in urban safety design, often failing to effectively integrate vulnerable road users (VRUs) - such as pedestrians and cyclists - into risk simulations. Municipalities also face the hurdle of deploying expensive on-street hardware to gather data, slowing down critical safety interventions. Finally, local authorities frequently lack the objective metrics needed to rank interventions and weigh capital investment costs against potential injury savings before making decisions.

Roadscor fundamentally disrupts this by virtualizing physical networks into dynamic Digital Twins. By shifting from reactive crashes to a proactive risk framework, the platform uses advanced predictive conflict analytics to evaluate infrastructure hazards, traffic volumes, and behavioral patterns simultaneously. It quantifies risk based on conflict likelihood, controllability, and severity, allowing cities to protect VRUs and maximize safety gains within their budgets without relying on costly hardware.