News

New project: Safety culture for automated vehicles

Jun, 21 2021

There is an increasing trend towards automation in the transport sector. Organisations that plan to introduce automated vehicles will likely need support on how to develop sustainable safety cultures to prevent accidents and to maintain high safety. Safety culture is defined as the prevailing way of thinking and acting at a workplace in relation to risks and safety, i.e. how safety is actually managed.

A pre-study has recently been carried out at SAFER to explore existing practice and knowledge of safety culture related to automated vehicles, and to identify and analyze blank spots and risks with automated vehicles. The conclusions from the pre-study indicated that there is a lack of knowledge about safety culture in the development of automated vehicles and that further studies are needed in this field. Companies that develop autonomous vehicles and machines and their customers, such as terminals and transport companies, need to gain knowledge about how to implement automated vehicles in their businesses and at the same time develop a good safety culture. 

This new pre-study "Safety culture for automated vehicles" is based on the previous pre-study at SAFER and the aims are to make an inventory of tools to measure and integrate safety culture in organizations and to prepare for the development of design processes which integrates safety culture as a factor in the design of autonomous vehicles. This pre-study also serves the purpose as a forum to exchange knowledge, experiences and questions between different stakeholders. Several workshops on different themes have been organized, such as: What is safety culture? Safety in design process and Work models for integrating safety culture. Survey tools to measure the safety culture, as well as sustainability and gender equality in organizations and workplaces is also on the agenda in this pre-study. The pre-study will also prepare for a full application to FFI/Vinnova in December 2021 about safety culture and automated vehicles.

The pre-study, which started on 1 April 2021, is funded by FFI in collaboration between VTI, RISE, Toyota material handling and Scania. Christina Stave, VTI, is the project leader and the project will be concluded by mid-September 2021. SAFER’s research area for Road user behavior will host the project.