Category: News

FAST-zero, the international symposia on Future Active Safety Technology toward zero traffic accidents, brings together researchers and engineers from industry and academia to present the current state-of-the-art and progress in research and development of active safety technologies. FAST-zero’25, the 8^th edition of this FERSI-endorsed event, will be hosted by the Laboratory of Accident Mechanisms Analysis of Gustave Eiffel University in association with the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan (JSAE). It will take place 23-26 September 2025, in Arles, France.

The call for papers is open now. The deadline for extended abstracts is 30 November 2024. For more information see the FAST-zero’25 website.

This new FERSI column, written by Evangelia (Lila) Gaitanidou (CERTH/HIT, Greece), emphasizes that, in the end, upon achieving an adequate level of technology, the success of automated vehicles in improving safety highly fully relies on the users, their acceptance of and trust in the system. The column calls for explicit consideration of the human perspective in the further development and deployment of automated vehicles.

Read the column »

This FERSI position paper demonstrates the important contribution of secondary rural roads to the burden of road traffic injuries and fatalities. It identifies the most important road safety challenges and emphasizes the corresponding need for addressing these by introducing appropriate remedial road infrastructure measures and new technologies, supported by consistent research and innovation.

• Download the position paper
• The report is also available in Portuguese

In a new column, FERSI colleagues Jindřich Frič & Pavel Havránek from the Transport Research Centre, Czech Republic, point at the need of in-depth crash analyses including analyses of the involved vehicles and their damage as well as some recent Czech research projects in this area.

Read the column »

We are very pleased to announce a new FERSI member: the State Agency Road Safety (SARS) of Bulgaria. SARS is a governmental body, established in 2019 with the mission to pursue an active policy to improve road safety based on systematic analysis, monitoring and evaluation with the aim to significantly reduce the adverse effects of road traffic crashes. With SARS we have another strong national road safety organisation on board. FERSI has now 22 members from an equal number of European countries. 

In the new FERSI column Professor Astrid Linder (VTI) sets out the need to provide all car occupants with the best crash injury protection and not just the ‘50th percentile male’. Ideally, car safety assessments should account for sex, body height, weight, and age to ensure occupant protection for all.

Read the column »

A new FERSI column, this time from Marko Ševrović & Anđelo Marunica (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences). The column presents some results of the SABRINA project, expressing concern about the safety level of the cycling infrastructure in the Danube region.

Download the column »

The 11th Young Researchers Seminar took place from 15 to 17 May 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal, hosted and organised by LNEC, the Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering.

It was a great and inspiring event. Around 35 enthusiastic young researchers from a variety of European universities and research institutes participated and presented their work. Around 15 senior researchers acted as tutor and mentored two or three of these young researchers, helping them to improve their writing and presentation skills. Topics were diverse and included road, rail and maritime, and multimodal transport issues. Next to the technical sessions, the seminar offered plenty of opportunities for networking in an informal and constructive atmosphere. Three keynote speakers covered topics of particular interest to young researchers: Thierry Goger, Secretary General FEHRL, elaborated on the different aspects of proposal and project management; Karst Geurs, Professor of Transport Planning at the University of Twente and Editor-in-Chief of ETRR, explained the many steps of getting a research article published; and last but not least, José Manuel Viegas, Professor of Transport at the University of Lisbon and former secretary General of ITF, gave a personal perspective on research in a rapidly changing society.

The seminar was financially supported by the members of the European Transport Research Alliance (ETRA): ECTRI, FEHRL, FERSI, Humanist and EURNEX.

The 11th edition of the International Cycling Safety Conference (ICSC) will be hosted by SWOV in The Hague from 15 to 17 November 2023. ICSC is a forum for researchers and experts in the field of cycling safety, whose scientific and practical activities are aimed at making cycling safer. This conference will allow for ample exchange of knowledge and experiences, thus contributing to improving cycling safety. The societal relevance of this topic is ever increasing, as cycling safety is seen as a promising solution to various sustainability and health issues whereas the number of road deaths and seriously injured cyclists doesn’t seem to be improving.

Call for abstracts open until May 5th

The call for abstracts is now open until the 5^th of May 2023 (extended deadline!). For more information: icsc-2023.net.

The Horizon 2020 project MEDIATOR cordially invites you to its Final Event on Thursday the 13th of April 2023 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The event is free of charge. For more information about the programme and for the registration (before 31 March!), check the final event page at the MEDIATOR website. 

MEDIATOR worked on developing a mediating system for drivers in semi-automated and highly automated vehicles, enhancing safe, real-time switching between the human driver and the automated system. The final event includes presentations of the project’s main accomplishments, various live demonstrations, interactive discussions with scientific, industrial and policy stakeholders and a keynote speech by Richard Schram, Technical Director Euro NCAP.