On 15 November the AfroSafe Academy organises the webinar Using crowdsourced data to enhance estimation of non-motorized traffic volume by Dr Valerian Kwigizile.
Category: News
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.
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.
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.
- Download the position paper
- The report is also available in Portuguese
FERSI Column: To the core of road crash causes
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.
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.
FERSI Column: Road Safety – Identifying the innovations that provide the best crash injury protection for all
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.
FERSI column: What is the level of cyclist safety in the Danube Region?
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.
11th Young Researchers Seminar
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.