News

SAFER continues to participate in the work in various platforms and settings to provide input to the EU's forthcoming research funding program. During Friday several important meetings were held in Brussels together with the members of the European Commission. In addition to SAFER’s director Magnus Granström, SAFER was represented also by Ingrid Skogsmo, the research center's Senior adviser as well as participants from the partners such as the Volvo Group.

During the morning, highlights from previous projects were raised to clearly show how research results have been utilized in products and other applications. Often, in research context, it takes quite a long time between research results and implementation and this session was appreciated. Examples that were given from SAFER were, e.g. the unique databases with naturalistic driving data and the FOT projects that provided input to EuroNCAP and different kinds of efficient protection systems developed by the European OEMs, as well as protective systems originating from the APROSYS project.

The members of the workshop also received an update on which preliminary research areas are currently being discussed for inclusion in the forthcoming framework:
- Safe System strategies
- New mobility patterns and societal changes and their link to road safety
- Automatic assessment of fitness to drive
- Testing methods and cheaper tools for drug detection
- Preventing inattention/distraction
- Emergency response
- Safe transition to higher levels of automation

Magnus Granström says:
“The road map we developed together within ERTRAC is a very useful tool and basis for the constructive dialogue with both the Commission and other stakeholders and gives a consistent message to deliver when showing the importance of traffic and road safety research in Europe”.