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ASTUS AB, DuWill AB, Hövding and Viscando are SAFER’s new partners that will contribute to research and knowledge sharing to support the creation of a safe and sustainable transport system.

“We are very happy and proud of our new partners and we welcome them to our competence center. The four companies all have unique and important expertise that will contribute to our common vision that all road users should travel safely in the transport system”, says Magnus Granström, SAFER's director.

ASTUS core competence: Safety argumentation for road vehicles 
ASTUS AB is an expert service provider with focus on safety argumentation for road vehicles.  Besides providing consultant services in the area, the company also significantly invests in international standard work, and in writing scientific papers. ASTUS AB is a member of SIS, and Rolf Johansson, the CEO of the company, is an appointed international expert for the creation of the standards ISO 5083, ISO 26262, ISO 21448, and UL4600. 

The current research focus is how to reach a complete and predictive safety argumentation for self-driving vehicles. When removing the manual driver from some road vehicles, the impact on traffic safety might be very high (potentially both positively and negatively!). Some examples of research questions that ASTUS are working with:
•    How can we come up with predictive safety claims about the traffic safety consequence of each specific version and variant of a self-driving vehicle? 
•    How can we generate new safety argumentation at high pace, when vehicles already being on the roads, are getting significant updates every few weeks? 

“We see great potential for ASTUS to contribute with unique expertise within the Functional safety and Safety assurance networks”, says Magnus.

DuWill is working with systematic analysis of road safety
DuWill’s core business is to increase both traffic safety and the share of sustainable and safe transport. Traffic safety and sustainability need to run in parallel to reach the desired progress on time for 2030. Tania Dukic Willstrand, DuWill’s CEO, has a PhD in Human Factors Engineering and 20 years of experience within R&D. Tania is a former research leader at VTI and former director for Road User Behaviour at SAFER. She is also a board member of the Swedish Traffic Medicine Association and for the National Society for Road Safety (NTF Väst). 

“Tania has an excellent competence in this line of research and a large network. The use of the global goals as a tool for research is also an area in which Tania has valuable expertise”, Magnus tells.

DuWill is working with systematic analysis of road safety, i.e. from goals to actions and evaluations and supports organisations to implement the recommendations included in the Stockholm declaration to reach the road safety goals by 2030. Operations are mainly research projects, consulting activities and education.  

Hövding possesses unique knowledge about cyclists
Hövding has about 40 employees and develops protection for urban cyclists. Their key product is an airbag head protection product called Hövding. Today, Hövding is rated the world’s safest means of head protection for cyclists, and now it’s connected as well. This enables it to automatically alert in the event of an accident.

Hövding’s product uses AI that is trained by machine-learning based on more than 5000 staged bike accidents with stunt persons. This information gives a unique knowledge of bike accidents and its dynamics. The latest product is a connected to a phone application and during the last year information about almost 1.000.000 bike trips corresponding to 90 laps around the world in distance have been collected. This dataset provides deep insights in daily bike commuters.
“Hövding will be a knowledgeable speaking partner in the area of unprotected road users and the data they collect regarding cyclists, traffic situations and accident sites can be valuable for various research activities”, Magnus says.

Naturalistic data on movements and behavior provided by Viscando
Viscando is developing advanced 3D&AI stationary sensors for collection of naturalistic data on movements, behaviors, interactions and conflicts of all traffic participants, as well as methods and data tools to identify and quantify safety risks in traffic, not least caused by traffic infrastructure. They have a broad expertise in sensor technologies, naturalistic data collection, traffic safety analysis and verification of autonomous and connected vehicles.

Viscando is supporting multiple cities and municipalities by traffic measurements and data analysis with focus on accurate multimodal traffic flow measurements, interaction and conflict analysis in traffic, especially with focus on unprotected road users in urban intersections, as well as analysis of influence of infrastructure development on safety. Moreover, Viscando is involved in several Smart City projects where the smart traffic control (e.g. real-time steering of traffic lights) is developed and evaluated. Viscando is also participating in several national research projects with focus on autonomous driving development and verification, for example the FFI projects MIDAS and MICA2 and a Drive Sweden financed AI driven mobility project. 

Magnus concludes: 
“The collaboration with Viscando will contribute to increased knowledge for SAFER in areas such as AI and data collection. Their accurate, up-to-date and easily interpretable data on traffic movements and interactions will bring value to our research community”.