SAFE-UP Project

As innovations like connected automated vehicles (CAVs) disrupt mobility as we know it, new safety challenges will keep emerging. Rather than using the traditional approach of post-collision analysis, SAFE-UP is proactively designing and analysing safety-critical scenarios in a highly automated and mixed traffic environment by integrating traffic accident data and future traffic conditions with new forms of safety metrics and sub-microscopic models in a traffic simulation platform. To validate the potential of these concepts, SAFE-UP will use two types of use cases (one urban and one non-urban) covering at least 64% of all current traffic fatalities.

Based on the findings, new safety technologies and safety assessment methodologies can be designed in tandem with the new mobility, rather than lagging behind.

Approach:

SAFE-UP will address these upcoming road safety challenges by identifying future safety-critical scenarios and develop tools and new technologies accordingly, for both active and passive safety systems, in four demos. SAFE-UP’s holistic approach means that all road users are considered, including those outside the car. 

Impact:

To complement the safety assessment methodologies, SAFE-UP will also produce targeted education and training schemes to raise awareness of the new road safety challenges we’ll face and the best ways to tackle them. The combined effect of the 4 SAFE-UP demonstrators will be to prevent 5244 fatalities and 173,273 serious injuries by 2050, which, compared to 2016’s figures, represents a reduction of 32.59% and 69.31% respectively, providing over 2900 jobs by 2025.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement number 861570.