Category: News

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.

On 15 November the AfroSafe Academy organises the webinar Using crowdsourced data to enhance estimation of non-motorized traffic volume by Dr Valerian Kwigizile.

More information and registration »

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 »