Traffic Safety Culture (TraSaCu) aims at developing a cultural approach in road traffic safety research and accident prevention. Traditional approaches to traffic safety shall be complemented by a cultural perspective which has emerged recently in safety research and prevention. Safety culture has been identified as an important factor of road safety as it helps understanding and explaining the typical patterns of risk perception and risk taking that prevail in different national, regional or local traffic systems as well as their relationships with numbers and forms of accidents. A weak safety culture produce higher numbers of accidents which are more severe. A strong safety culture helps reducing the number of accidents as well as mitigating their severity. It strengthens safety relevant attitudes and behaviour and it is also a condition for making road safety measures more effective. According to a working definition of the US Department of Transportation Safety Council (US DOT), traffic safety culture is defined as the shared values, actions, and behaviours that demonstrate a commitment to safety over competing goals and demands. However, a unified concept of safety culture still does not exist. Therefore, the project will elaborate an empirically grounded and theoretically adequate concept of traffic safety culture, based on this definition by conducting a number of case studies of different traffic safety cultures across Europe. It focuses on the safety cultures that emerge under different institutional, demographic and topographical conditions and their influence on the numbers and forms of accidents. Research focuses on the culturally mediated interaction between traffic participants and their environment in terms of the cultural patterns of risk taking and risk perception. It also looks at those cultural elements that can be changed easily in order to improve road safety of the investigated traffic systems.

LEVITATE aims to develop a wide-ranging evaluation framework to assess the impact of connected and automated transport (CAT) on all aspects of transport and individual mobility as well as at societal level. This framework will be used to evaluate the impacts of CAVs on individuals, the mobility system and society using a wide range of indicators. The timescales for the forecasting will include • short term – CAT at an early stage of implementation, technological capability is broadly in line with present day • medium term – CAT becoming more widespread, increasing capability of technologies. Increasing penetration of more highly automated vehicles in fleet • long term – ubiquitous highly integrated transport systems, vehicle fleet is predominantly automated, personal mobility, vehicles and infrastructure have adapted to the new technologies. The outcomes of Levitate will include a set of validated methods to measure the impacts of existing technologies and forecast that of future systems. The methods will be applied to a series of scenarios including those of the present day to provide a range of impact studies of new and future mobility technologies. Based on the Levitate approach a new Connected and automated mobility decision support tool will be developed to provide an evidential basis for future mobility policy-making.

The Connected and Adaptive Maintenance for Safer Urban and Secondary Roads project (‘CAMBER’) aims to develop and demonstrate improved safety monitoring across urban and secondary rural road networks through real-time data feedback into road maintenance systems and proven low-cost interventions. Performance metrics based on new-generation data sources will provide road managers up-to-date information on safety issues, damage, and routine maintenance and upgrade needs. Data collated from a range of sources, such as telematics, vehicle and smartphone sensors, and road user feedback, will feed into safety assessment models to flag what measures are required to ensure a safe road environment for all road users, including road-user minority groups with varying design needs, such as powered two-wheelers (PTW). CAMBER will support this through much-need research and testing of low-cost road safety interventions and low-impact maintenance techniques, including those for vehicles with advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The approaches will be demonstrated on urban and road networks in five European countries. CAMBER’s economically-sound solutions and new knowledge will be communicated through established networks to European road managers, policymakers and industry to support the decision-making and investment needed for more efficient maintenance for safer urban and secondary roads.