The goal of SUPREME (SUmmary and Publication of Best Practices in Road Safety in the EU-MEmber States plus Switzerland and Norway) was to collect, analyse, summarise and publish best practices in road safety in the Member States of the European Union, as well as in Switzerland and Norway. Traffic accidents are the final result of a series of events, leading to a situation which makes a crash inevitable. Traditionally traffic safety policies are geared towards an approach focussing on taking away major causes of specific accidents (accident prevention). Although the above approach is very successful, it was realized that more is needed to bring down the number of casualties and injuries. Therefore a second approach was developed focussing at a further reduction of the impacts of a crash (accident impact mitigation). This dual approach allowed us to bring down the number of traffic casualties and injuries considerably, this despite a significant increase of the traffic volumes on the road. In the early nineties of the former century it was realised that a further reduction of traffic unsafety would ask for additional measures. Programs like ‘Sustainable Safety’ (The Netherlands) and ‘Vision Zero’ (Sweden) are the result of this rethinking of the traffic safety situation. Characteristic for this new approach are: * road infrastructure is adapted to the limited (driving) capabilities of the traveller; * vehicles are equipped with devices that support and simplify the various tasks of the traveller and that at the same time protect the vulnerable traveller against injuries; * travellers are sufficiently and adequately trained and informed. The safety principles that form part of this approach are: * try to avoid unintentional use of the infrastructure; use is in accordance with function of road; * try to avoid (vehicle) interactions with significant differences in mass, speed and direction; * try to avoid insecure behaviour of the traveller: encourage predictive travel behaviour. This report focuses on vehicle measures, which can help achieve all of the objectives listed above. More information about the project and its result can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/transport/supreme/index_en.htm. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting