The overall objective of DaCoTA is to help develop knowledge-based road safety policies in European countries by continuing to develop a European Road Safety Observatory (ERSO) and providing methods to use ERSO data for policy development and implementation. Road safety has been increasing in motorized countries now for 30 years and this increase shows that political willingness and efficient countermeasures can actually produce positive results. The last couple of decades have seen a promising increase in e-safety systems directly linked to technological progress. These systems are complementary to traditional safety countermeasures (regulation, education, enforcement, advertising and information campaign, car crashworthiness, infrastructure improvements, etc.) E-safety systems address accident prevention (preventive safety), accident avoidance (active safety), injury mitigation (passive safety) and rescue and health care improvement. These systems are intended to assist, inform or alert the driver by addressing one or several driving tasks (e.g. a navigation system helps the driver in his search for the right direction), by amplifying driver actions (e.g. the emergency brake assist reduces the time necessary to reach ABS regulation), by correcting a problem (i.e. ESC recovers loss of control), by preparing and providing car occupant or external user protection in the case of a crash (e.g. seat belts, airbags and pre-crash systems), or even by relieving the driver of certain tasks (e.g. Intelligent Speed Adaptation systems can, to a certain extent, replace the driver for speed regulation). And of course some other systems are protecting the car occupants in combination with a stiffer and enhanced car structure (seat belts, load limiters, pretensioners, airbags, etc.) eSafety is often regarded in its very limited viewpoint which is concerning only standalone car technologies. It is, however, actually embracing much more: road infrastructure safety, traffic, car-to-car communication, also car-to-car or user-to-user communication or any kind of countermeasures linked with the availability of new technology. To a certain extent, automatic speed cameras and automatic penalties can also be considered as e-safety systems. The integrated safety program (FP6), the e-safety forum, the cars 21 initiative and other actions since the nineties have demonstrated that, as far as research or deployment issues are concerned, the automotive industry, the road building industry and the public authorities have increasingly paid attention to the potential of technology to save lives and reduce harm on European roads. Considerable investments and expectations have been put in technology as a promising way for crash and injury prevention. A European Road Safety Observatory must then take the broad and extended esafety issues into consideration by analysing what types of safety problems are addressed by technologies, and, if and how technologies are effectively and efficiently addressing these problems. The consideration of e-safety as a potential means for accident and injury prevention encompasses four main aspects, in sequential order: • The determination and/or the updating of accident and injury causation issues • The identification and the update of the road users’ needs in terms of accident and injury risk reduction based of this prior knowledge about causation (if, for example, accident causation analysis reveals a problem in driver’s perception of the pedestrian in unlit urban areas, the driver need could be an enhanced vision in unlit urban areas). • The determination of whether current or future technology can address these needs (for example, do the current night vision applications, and the technology behind, really target, in its complexity, the needs for a better detection of pedestrian in unlit urban areas) • The assessment of all the potential benefits, and not exclusively the safety benefits With the progress of the electronics, the evolution of safety systems always more sophisticated in the automotive industry tends to develop more and more. This Technology which was formerly reserved in “luxury” vehicle begins to become more democratic on more popular vehicle thanks to the costs which decrease. In front of this myriad of solutions it is important to be able to estimate the effectiveness of these systems to select the most relevant, be able to prioritize them, even propose them in the regulations. 3 main challenges have to be taken into account: • in an evolutionary context and multidisciplinary expectations to define relevant criteria; • develop tools, strong methodologies to calculate these criteria; • to have an effective and accessible common information system on the accidents in Europe The basic research question of WP5 is “How does technology contribute to road safety?” The objective is to develop methodologies and approaches that will enable future evaluation of the safety impact of emerging intelligent technologies. To answer to this question we propose in this report to develop the following aspects: 1. The methodological point of view: The objective is to develop methodologies and approaches that will enable future evaluation of the safety impact of emerging intelligent technologies. This is done by: • Identifying and updating the user’s needs in term of accident risk prevention and injury risk prevention • Identifying and updating how current technology can address these needs • Providing methodology on assessing the potential benefits of the relevant safety applications (not only the safety benefits). 2. The technological point of view : the objective is to show the limits and the future challenges related to the technology; 3. Tools/support point of view: Previous assessment methods need data to estimate effectiveness or performance of the technology. We propose here in the third part to make a specific step on this important aspect. (Author/publisher)
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