Road
Safer Micromobility
27 March 2024
- Micromobility is becoming safer. But, an increase in severe injuries from e-scooter crashes is cause for concern. Overall, shared e-scooter crash risk is decreasing as their usage is increasing faster than injuries.
Safe infrastructure and vehicle design matter. A focus on rider behaviour and safety equipment must be complemented by better infrastructure and improved vehicle design – especially for e-scooters.
Reinforcing existing policies improves safety. Road safety measures also make micromobility safer – managing speed, providing training to road users and enforcing rules against impaired driving and riding.
How Governments Can Bring Low-Emission Trucks to Our Roads – and Fast
13 December 2023
- Now or never. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, governments cannot let technological uncertainty be a barrier to action.
- Assess the likelihood. Governments need to carefully assess the likelihoods with which different technologies will deliver effective climate action. They must promote the most likely technologies, even with uncertainty.
- Bet on batteries. Battery-electric vehicles currently have the highest likelihood of successfully decarbonising road transport.
Using Safety Performance Indicators to Improve Road Safety: The case of Korea
10 December 2023
- Set safety targets. Ambitious road safety targets and concrete measures help to reduce the number of road fatalities and injuries quickly. Including meaningful performance indicators in road safety strategies is crucial to success.
- Prioritise vulnerable people. Pedestrians, cyclists and the elderly are most vulnerable in road traffic. Prioritise their safety by using road safety performance indicators to pave the way for more inclusive, protective road environments and reduce the risk of road traffic causing tragedies.
- Create a feedback loop. The insights gained from safety performance indicators must feed directly into improving road safety strategies. Creating a continuous feedback loop will make the strategies responsive to changes, measures more impactful and road traffic safer.
Shifting the Focus: Smaller Electric Vehicles for Sustainable Cities
26 September 2023
- Shift the focus of policies that promote electric vehicles to end the dependency on large, under-used vehicles.
- Help make smaller electric vehicles an attractive choice for citizens.
- Ensure the transition to smaller electric vehicles goes in hand with adequate safety provisions.
- Fast-track the electrification of shared mobility services in complement with public transport.
- Ensure the availability of enough charging points to make electric mobility attractive.
The Freight Space Race: Curbing the Impact of Freight Deliveries in Cities
5 December 2022
- Manage curb space with a focus on the needs of both passengers and goods transport.
- Apply access restrictions for delivery vehicles in urban areas while considering business practices.
- Use more logistics data to better monitor and manage freight flows.
Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety: 2022 Update
16 October 2022
- Ensure consistent collection of reliable urban road safety data.
- Create urban traffic observatories that collect both general mobility data and road safety data.
- Set ambitious reduction targets for the number of traffic crash casualties in cities.
- Focus on protecting vulnerable road users on urban streets.
- Measure crash risks for vulnerable road users with appropriate indicators.
- Adopt an integrated urban mobility plan based on Safe System principles.
Decarbonising Europe’s Trucks: How to Minimise Cost Uncertainty
4 September 2022
- Ensure that policies to promote direct electrification of trucks remain technology-neutral.
- Launch targeted studies and pilot projects to assess the merits of electric road systems for road freight decarbonisation.
- Further investigate decarbonisation technologies for particularly challenging road freight applications.
- Introduce policies that help zero-emission vehicles become cost-competitive sooner.
- Accelerate the deployment of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure.
- Strengthen regulations that make trucks more energy-efficient.
The Safe System Approach in Action
29 June 2022
- Commit to a long-term Safe System initiative
- Build Safe System initiatives on data and evidence of effectiveness
- Start at a manageable level of activity and then scale up
- Build capacity for practical implementation of the Safe System approach, especially in low- and middle-income countries
- Use pilot projects to further test and develop the Safe System framework
- Use the framework to assess projects, organisations and policies, identify gaps, and plan effective strategies
Mode Choice in Freight Transport
27 February 2022
- Apply integrated policy approaches to create coherent interventions across freight-transport modes.
- Focus on mitigating external costs associated with each freight mode, rather than on modal shift as such.
- Improve the evaluation of policy interventions’ effectiveness to better inform measures that influence the choice of freight transport modes.
- Create fair competition between freight transport modes.
Artificial Intelligence in Proactive Road Infrastructure Safety Management
14 December 2021
- Develop a competitive market for the sharing and monetising of traffic and mobility data.
- Do not wait for real-time data before developing risk maps.
- Mandate the sharing of aggregate vehicle data.
- Learn from other fields and best practice for data sharing and privacy protection.
- Support research and innovation towards trusted and explainable AI.
- Align new tools with precise policy objectives.
- Develop new skills and digital infrastructure.
- Clarify regulatory frameworks for data protection and digital security.
- Design user-friendly risk-mapping tools.
Motorway Safety in Korea
6 December 2021
- Develop a proactive approach to motorway safety.
- Promote work-related road safety in road haulage companies and in other sectors.
- Review the cost-benefit evaluation of road safety investment.
- Create an observatory to map and monitor unsafe situations and behaviours.
- Review the legal and operational frameworks for speed enforcement.
- Set high vehicle safety standards inspired by those developed in the European Union.
- Upgrade the physical and digital infrastructure for the adoption of connected and automated driving.
- Set guidance and standards for the rapid deployment of Co‑operative-ITS services in Korea.
- The KEC should invest in solutions that protect road users, from the most traditional to the most innovative.
How Urban Delivery Vehicles can Boost Electric Mobility
9 December 2020
- Prioritise electrification of vehicles with high mileage and regular daily activity, including LCVs in last-mile delivery.
- Promote electric light commercial vehicles in cities and tightly regulate combustion-engine vehicles.
- Strengthen fuel economy standards, zero-emission mandates and economic incentives for light commercial vehicles.
- Define regulatory requirements and clarify costs for upgrades to the electricity grid needed for electric vehicles.
- Use vehicle design and components of electric passenger cars to unlock price reductions of electric light commercial vehicles.
- Strengthen co-operation among stakeholders to reduce investments risks for the manufacturing of electric light commercial vehicles.
Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety
4 November 2020
- Set ambitious targets to reduce the number of casualties.
- Create joint mobility and safety observatories in cities.
- Put the focus on protecting vulnerable road users.
- Measure the safety of vulnerable road users in cities with appropriate indicators.
Regulations and Standards for Clean Trucks and Buses
14 September 2020
- Ensure that vehicle safety regulations and standards for electric and hydrogen cover all classes of road vehicles and better differentiate between light and heavy vehicles.
- Leverage the experience of international regulatory fora to extend the coverage of safety-related requirements to heavy electric vehicles.
- Ensure that the scope of regulations on the safety of hydrogen-powered heavy vehicles addresses aspects that are currently not adequately considered.
- Involve diverse transport and energy stakeholders in the development of charging standards for electric heavy vehicles.
- Address missing elements in regulations and standards related to electric road systems.
- Develop hydrogen refuelling protocols for heavy vehicles using gaseous storage at 70 MPa, new nozzles and instruments guaranteeing compliance with stringent fuel quality requirements.
- Increase the focus of pre-normative research on the safe use of low- and zero emission vehicles with existing vehicle infrastructure, especially for hydrogen-powered options.
- Harmonise regulations on tailpipe GHG emissions and energy consumption of heavy vehicles, also integrating instruments evaluating energy use for low- and zero-emission vehicles.
- Fully integrate electricity and hydrogen into regulatory policies on low-carbon fuels.
- Address non-regulated pollutants and integrate hydrogen-powered vehicles using internal combustion engines in regulations on tailpipe pollutant emissions.
- Address the environmental performance of vehicle batteries with regulatory innovation targeting their durability, carbon footprint and the sustainability of associated supply chains.
- Develop an internationally harmonised regulatory framework for the application of differentiated road charges and access restrictions based on environmental performances of vehicles.
Safe Micromobility
17 February 2020
- Allocate protected space for micromobility and keep pedestrians safe.
- To make micromobility safe, focus on motor vehicles.
- Regulate low-speed e-scooters and e-bikes as bicycles, higher-speed micro-vehicles as mopeds.
- Collect data on micro-vehicle trips and crashes.
- Proactively manage the safety performance of street networks.
- Include micromobility in training for road users.
- Tackle drunk driving and speeding across all vehicle types.
- Eliminate incentives for micromobility riders to speed.
- Improve micro-vehicle design.
- Reduce wider risks associated with shared micromobility operations.
New Directions for Data-Driven Transport Safety
22 May 2019
- Develop standards and platforms for the collection and sharing of safety-critical vehicle data.
- Ensure privacy in the use of safety-critical data.
- Refine the applications of surrogate traffic safety metrics.
- Harness Big Data for road safety but beware of biases.
- Review training needs for road safety professionals.
- Empower transport users and workers through mechanisms to report safety concerns.
- Make safety-critical vehicle data available for telematics applications.
- Find ways to integrate smartphones into Cooperative-ITS to benefit all users.
- Improve and link police and hospital data on road crash injuries.
- Prevent, detect and signal driver distractions.
- Revise trigger mechanisms for automatic crash notification and event data recording.
- Share data to enforce limits on driving hours in the gig economy.
- Favour more accurate and relevant geo-spatial accuracy for safety applications.
- Update legal frameworks to account for ubiquitous sensing data and their use in improving safety.
Enhancing Connectivity and Freight in Central Asia
13 May 2019
- Enhance local connectivity along with improvement of international corridors.
- Price transit traffic to cover its full costs.
- Reform road investment and maintenance funding.
- Pursue private investments for cost efficiency.
- Support the creation of a modern logistics sector.
- Institutionalise best practices in transport planning.
- Set performance standards for customs.
- Straighten regional and international cooperation.
High Capacity Transport
1 May 2019
- Use the potential of High Capacity Vehicles to increase transport efficiency, reduce traffic volumes, lower emissions and achieve better safety outcomes.
- Use well-monitored trials to introduce High Capacity Vehicles on a road network.
- Configure High Capacity Vehicles for the specific area in which they will operate.
Road Safety in European Cities
10 April 2019
- Develop mobility plans and observatories in cities.
- Use appropriate indicators to measure the safety of vulnerable road users.
- Collect traffic casualty data from hospitals and from the population, not only from police records.
- Improve the comparability of road safety statistics. Adopt ambitious targets for casualty number reduction.
- Focus on protecting vulnerable road users.
- Conduct further research on crash risks.
- Local government should demonstrate leadership.
- Gather evidence that can serve as fundament of road safety policy.
- Create strong Metropolitan Transport Authorities.
Commercial Vehicle On-Board Safety Systems
24 January 2019
- Ensure international harmonisation of regulation for autonomous trucks.
- Use the flexibility within existing regulatory frameworks to accommodate vehicle automation technologies.
- Weigh the advantages, disadvantages and limits to stretching existing regulatory frameworks to cover safe vehicle automation.
- Consider data-led approaches for regulating vehicles with high automation levels. Consider government intervention to address labour issues if and where they arise.
Policies to Extend the Life of Road Assets
20 December 2018
- Introduce a proactive approach for the maintenance of road assets.
- Build a proactive, data-driven approach to the maintenance of road assets.
- Strive for continuous professionalisation in road asset management.
- Move from managing the assets to cross-asset management.
- Adopt regulatory frameworks that treat the use of road assets as an economic input.
- Implement infrastructure pricing for trucks to improve cost recovery.
- Better understand the reasons for non-compliance with truck weight limits.
- Focus on positive incentives for efficiency in regulatory and compliance frameworks.
- Develop use cases and business models for the digital infrastructure of truck traffic management.
- Create incentives for the logistics sector to implement truck traffic management.
- Improve awareness of the mutual impact that policies have on the environmental performance of road freight transport and extending the lifespan of road assets.
- Focus on creating a comprehensive regulatory environment rather than on individual measures.
The Social Impacts of Road Pricing
10 October 2018
- Make demand management and congestion reduction the primary objective of road pricing.
- Differentiate road pricing by location and time.
- Combine road pricing and public transport planning to improve efficiency.
- Examine the combined effects of scheme design and mitigation to understand distributional impacts.
- Consider the use of discounts and exemptions carefully.
- Develop road pricing as part of an intervention package to achieve better utilisation of urban space.
- Reconcile economic, practical and political aspects in the design of road pricing schemes.
- Differentiate charges and consider adopting a rules-based pricing approach.
Safer Roads with Automated Vehicles?
22 May 2018
- Reinforce the Safe System approach to ensure automated vehicles are used safely.
- Apply Vision Zero thinking to automated driving.
- Avoid safety performance being used to market competing automated vehicles.
- Carefully assess the safety impacts of systems that share driving tasks between humans and machines.
- Require reporting of safety-relevant data from automated vehicles.
- Develop and use a staged testing regime for automated vehicles.
- Establish comprehensive cybersecurity principles for automated driving.
- Ensure the functional isolation of safety-critical systems and that connectivity does not compromise cybersecurity or safety.
- Provide clear and targeted messaging of vehicle capabilities.
Speed and Crash Risk
28 March 2018
- Reduce the speed on roads as well as speed differences between vehicles.
- Set speed limits according to Safe System principles.
- Improve infrastructure and enforcement if speed limits are to be increased.
- Use automatic speed control to reduce speed effectively.