Rob Eenink: Looking back at 12 years in FERSI and 6 years as FERSI President

How has FERSI developed these past years?
Traditionally, FERSI has been an advocate for road safety research and a network for road safety research organisations. Shortly after I started as president, I asked the members what they valued most. Their answer was unanimous: the network! So, in the past years FERSI and its meetings have become increasingly content-focused with, to name a few: ‘focal point presentations’, working groups on topics like infrastructure and cycling, exchanging international practices about pertinent national issues, taking turns in writing columns. Of course, Ingrid van Schagen (FERSI’s Secretary) and I have also been to Brussels to advise on road safety and to get the most relevant topics in the Horizon Europe, the European Union’s key funding program for research and innovation. However, advocacy for road safety is already very well served by ETSC. As FERSI, we can effectively support ETSC by providing evidence-based knowledge.

What are you most proud of?
The ultimate objective is to prevent road crashes, and as FERSI partners we try to contribute to this goal by coordinating and promoting relevant research. When you enjoy what you do, success will follow: I believe joy and success are closely intertwined and looking back at my time in FERSI, we definitely had both. Let me pick two highlights.

The first one has to be the FERSI conference in 2022 in The Hague. It was interesting, inspiring, had a good mix of researchers, policy makers, advisors and other disciplines, was very ‘gezellig’ and we enjoyed tasty traditional Dutch cuisine (which is actually Indonesian). My SWOV colleagues Tineke Togni and Maura van Strijp were absolutely fabulous.

Secondly, although it has taken quite some time to get there, I am quite happy with the many short research visits we have had between members. These educational visits by researchers to other research institutes have always focused on specific topics and included specific goals. As you might remember from school, you can learn a lot by looking at the one next to you (but maybe not such a good idea in an exam). Dominique Mignot (FERSI’s Vice President) and Ingrid van Schagen did a great job in arranging this.

What could have gone better?
In my newspaper, I read that the industry has invested 144 billion Euro in automated vehicles (based on a McKinsey report). The bottleneck in introducing automated vehicles on the market is safety: if they can prove it is safe -which is not very well defined- it can be sold. So, we might even conclude that the private sector has invested 144 billion Euro in the road safety issues regarding automated vehicles. FERSI institutes invest in improving road safety of vehicle automation as well, but the vast majority of our work focuses on issues that the public sector is generally held responsible for solving. Issues like drink-driving, drugs, distraction, human limitations, speeding, unsafe road and network design, ineffective policies. After having spent many years in this field, I would be surprised if the budget spent on researching all these different topics added up to more than even as little as 1% of 144 billion Euros. Effective road safety measures in the public domain are either relatively expensive (e.g. safe roads, enforcement) or relatively restrictive for road users (e.g. ISA, bicycle helmets). Both problems present politicians with quite a dilemma. A way out often looked at is innovation and for that you need to invest in research. The costs of crashes typically amount to 2-3% of a countries’ GDP, mainly born by road users. In the private sector, the investor also receives the revenues, for example by selling cars. In the public sector, the government will need to be the investor, whereas the people will be the ones that benefit from the revenues. Sometimes it feels like the government has forgotten that this is their primary purpose. So, to get back to the question about what could have gone better: the point I have tried to make here is not something I feel FERSI could have done better. However, I do feel that, in order to substantially make an increased impact on road safety, it is imperative to shift this dynamic.

Any last words?
First: I wish the new board lots of joy and success, especially the new President Luca Persia. To conclude, I have really enjoyed collaborating with others. We complement each other nicely, and this synergy has added value. I want to thank my fellow board members Astrid Linder (VTI), Mateja Markl (APV), Lila Gaitanidou (HIT/CERTH), Dominique Mignot (UGE) and Klaus Machata (KfV), we really did this together. Many thanks to my ‘home’ team: Sanne van Gils, Sandra Jansen, Nicole de Groot, Maura van Strijp, Lucas Raggers. Last but definitely not least, I thank the marvelous Ingrid.

FERSI’s new Board installed, Luca Persia new President

At the General Assembly at KTI in Budapest on 7 and 8 November, the FERSI members unanimously elected Luca Persia as their new President. Luca is the Director of the Research Centre for Transport and Logistics (CTL) of the Sapienza University of Rome. As FERSI President he succeeds Rob Eenink (SWOV, Netherlands) who has held this position since 2018.

The other Board members were also elected unanimously: Vice-President Jindřich Frič (CDV, Czechia), and members João Cardoso (LNEC, Portugal), Jean-François Gaillet (Vias Institute, Belgium) and Evangelia Gaitanidou (CERTH-HIT, Greece). 

With the new President the FERSI secretariat moved to CTL. The new FERSI secretary is Sevket Oguz Kagan Capkin.

FERSI column: Forgiving roadsides – the perspective from car and two-wheeler road users

In a new column, FERSI member João Cardoso from the Portuguese Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) focuses on the importance of roadside safety. Supported by European and national crash data, he points at the urgent need for good and updated roadside safety criteria and their implementation – not only on motorways and other major roads, but also on secondary rural roads. And not only for car users, but certainly also for two-wheelers.

Download the column »

FAST-zero’25: call for papers

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 8th 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.

FERSI column: Automated vehicles’ safety and the human perspective

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 »

Secondary roads – road safety challenges

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.

State Agency Road Safety, Bulgaria joined FERSI

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.