About V4SAFETY
The main objective of V4SAFETY is to provide a comprehensive procedure for conducting computer simulations to determine the long-term performance and impact of road safety solutions, from the identification and collection of the relevant input to the projection of the results to a region of interest and a prediction of changes in performance and impact that might be expected in the coming years.
The procedures come with guidelines on the application and a demonstration on selected use cases. Following objectives are distinguished:
| Objectives | |
|---|---|
| 1 | A widely accepted and harmonised predictive assessment framework for road safety. |
| 2 | Guidelines to ensure that models and simulation components properly address the behaviour of drivers, vehicle occupants and VRUs. |
| 3 | A methodology to capture and describe scenarios that accurately represent the baseline. |
| 4 | Guidelines for models and simulation components to properly address different types of safety solutions. |
| 5 | Demonstrations of the framework for relevant use cases. |
| 6 | A methodology for projecting the benefits of the applications of safety measures throughout the EU in the coming years, considering future changes in mobility systems and traffic scenarios. |
| 7 | Acceptance of the proposed framework through an approach that is standardised, transparent, and holistic. |
Methodology
Quantifying the impact of safety solutions has been a priority of road authorities, consumer organisations, insurers and safety solution developers since traffic safety became an important societal consideration. The road safety solution impact assessment typically seeks to ensure that a solution is effective so solutions that show the largest safety benefits can be promoted.
Traffic is changing rapidly, bringing new mobility solutions and travel patterns. In parallel we see safety solutions developed at an unprecedented pace to avoid and mitigate crashes. Thus there is a need for more rapid methods for assessing a range of road safety solutions. Methods are needed to assess solutions that aim to avoid crashes or mitigate their impact by acting before the crash, as well as those solutions that act when the crash is a fact (passive and post-crash safety) and combinations of these.
To date, there is no commonly agreed-upon approach. A harmonised, simulation-based, prospective safety assessment methodology is called for, to be developed as a general framework which can be shared by all the industry and consumer rating organisations, which will facilitate the widespread use of the framework. Many challenges must be overcome to design a harmonised method that provides accurate, transparent, relevant and comparable results.
V4SAFETY aims to develop and document an overall framework for simulation-based safety assessments and show its feasibility by applying it to a set of use cases. The experience gained in P.E.A.R.S. and ISO /TC22/SC36/ WG7, as well as by the individual V4SAFETY partners will serve as starting point.
Impacts
V4SAFETY contributes to safe, seamless, smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable mobility systems for people and goods, along the requested impact aspects:
- Secure and trustworthy: harmonised prospective assessment becomes a de facto standard
- Reduction of serious injuries: accelerated introduction of road safety solutions
- Reliability and performance: shorter development lifecycles of safety solutions
V4SAFETY will work towards a wide acceptance and harmonisation of the predictive assessment framework for road safety established in the project. A large network of stakeholders has been established to realize a wide uptake of the results even during project execution.
All stakeholders need/require a predictive safety assessment framework based on virtual simulations that allows fast and extensive evaluation of safety solutions for a large variety of relevant (future) scenarios.
Potentially hazardous traffic situations are challenging for any safety system, particularly when Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) are involved, due to their unpredictable behaviour in interactions with other road users. Consumer tests related to cyclists’ interactions with passenger cars exist, these tests only cover a fraction of relevant VRU interactions. The lack of a comprehensive set of tests indicates there is a strong need for a harmonised prospective safety assessment method. The methods must make use of predictive simulation in addition to existing physical tests – for type approval and for consumer testing.
In safety assessment the outcome of a situation with a safety feature or regulatory change applied is compared to that of a baseline situation – in which the safety measure or regulatory change is not implemented. The selection of relevant, realistic baseline scenarios is of utmost importance for the quality of the assessment and the results. Harmonisation of the assessment framework is essential to achieve explainable and comparable results, independent of the specific simulation tool used.
Open Science
V4SAFETY aims to maximise the acceptability and future application of the safety performance assessment framework, so the consortium’s outputs will be as open as possible. All relevant deliverables will be openly shared, and publications are intended to be open access. It is planned to make some of the models from the use cases widely available and to provide links to suitable, existing, open-access models. V4SAFETY will provide input to open standards and spread knowledge gained in the project through workshops with stakeholders.