TOWARDS A FORGIVING AND SELF-EXPLANATORY EUROPE

The IN-SAFETY Consortium is pleased to invite you to the project’s workshop that is going to take place in Brussels, on 24 October 2007. The major event is expected to attract participants working on the area of traffic safety and relevant key stakeholders. The workshop will provide an opportunity for interaction with the project’s consortium and a discussion forum between interested people on the field.

Workshop objectives

The overriding objective of the workshop is to gather the views of the audience on the near-final results of the IN-SAFETY project. The project outputs that will be presented include:

Cooperative pilots and new ideas – this will provide an overview of the pilot tests undertaken in a real traffic environment in Athens, Turin and Stuttgart and in a driving simulator in Sweden. The applications tested were derived from the 6 scenarios.

Application guidelines & policy recommendations – this will give an overview of the work undertaken to support the transfer of preliminary results into real world environments. Priority implementation scenarios regarding new technological applications for road safety improvements will be presented and remaining open questions for further research addressed.

Harmonized messages for the Trans European Road Network – this will cover the main output of the extensive design and evaluation efforts deployed, to achieve the most comprehensive and legible symbols and typefaces for proposed application on Variable Message Signs and conventional signs of the TERN.

Models for safety analysis – the use of traffic models in safety applications will be illustrated and some examples given. The models comprise macroscopic traffic models as well as microscopic models for traffic flow analyses.

ITS training tool for road operators – this will present the Multimedia Training Tool on ITS, developed within IN-SAFETY, including thorough descriptions of about 45 telematic systems, grouped in 6 categories: providing information on system functionality, usability, quality of service, relevant application examples, future prospects, etc. Moreover, special reference is made to relevant standards and standardisation bodies. A demonstration of the tool will also take place.

The programme and registration form are available at: http://www.insafety- eu.org/news.html

InSafety project

To achieve forgiving roads in Europe, the EU co- funded IN-SAFETY project has investigated the combination of new technologies with existing infrastructure to improve road safety. Numerous cooperative solutions have been analysed, including in-vehicle speed alerts based on information provided by road-side beacons and cooperative lane-departure warnings, and from these, six scenarios have been selected, elements of which will be tested in real and simulated trials around Europe. The work on self-explanatory roads has essentially focused on preparing recommendations for harmonised road signing (electronic and static) in a multi-cultural and multi-lingual Europe.

Why the need for In-Safety?

Over 42 000 road users are killed in European Union (EU) countries annually and around 3.5 million are injured. Road safety engineering measures may reduce casualties by 6.5%. However, the rather high cost of traditional infrastructure construction/ adaptations is a prohibiting factor. The combination of new technologies with existing infrastructure (or with limited improvements) may lead to much more cost- efficient solutions and contribute to the EU’s target of reducing the number or road fatalities by 50% by 2010. Thus, the aim of the EU-funded IN-SAFETY project is to define intelligent, intuitive and cost- efficient combinations of new technologies and traditional infrastructure best practice applications, in order to enhance the forgiving and self-explanatory nature of roads.