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SAFER’s collaborative partnership with India, SITIS (Sweden-India Transport Innovation and Safety Partnership), is developing and in one of the projects the data collection tests will soon begin. Equipment has now been installed in the vehicles and the tests on public roads are being prepared.

SITIS was launched in Stockholm in February on the third global conference on road safety within the UN with the vision to leverage the know-how of India and Sweden to accelerate progress and deployment of safe and sustainable transport solutions and actionable policies, contributing to significant progress of Indian transport system. One of the first projects within the partnership, "Safe and Secure Transport corridors in India", is about collecting naturalistic driving data from buses in India. The project entails a long-distance coach over a corridor in customer service. The aim is to collects data e.g. about the driver, the vehicles, the passengers, the infrastructure as well as the surroundings like other vehicles, weather and road conditions. Example of research questions to be address are related to for example data analysis of traffic behaviour, weather conditions, driver behaviour, overall logistics, deploying connectivity solutions for critical moments, emergency response systems and the ability to communicate with the infrastructure.

Fredrik Von Corswant, one of the SAFER associated researchers and infrastructure leader for the vehicle lab Revere tells more:

”It is an important milestone in the project that we have now got the test equipment in place in one of the buses. The traffic information we will be able to collect during the project is very valuable to us in our future research at SAFER. Accident types and road user behavior differ in different parts of the world. The more we can understand about real traffic as we develop safe traffic system of the future, the more lives we can probably save”.
The ambition in SITIS is also to create a partnership that fosters innovation, develops competence and assets that creates the capacity to address complex challenges and make a significant impact. The collaboration aims to become a prominent platform for applied research and innovation in the area of safe & sustainable transport.

“The project clearly demonstrates the collaborative effort between a number of organizations within the two countries”, concludes Arpit Arpit Karsolia, Research Engineer at Revere.

The members of SITIS are all leading in the traffic safety area. Members are:
• The Volvo Group (initiator of Sitis)
• Autoliv
• Ericsson
• Manipal Hospital
• Altair
• Saab
• Tech Mahindra
• India Institute of Science (IISc)
• Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Program
• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (TRIPP, IITD)
• Chalmers University of Technology
• Rise
• ARAI
• Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)
The partnership will also collaborate with the Vision Zero Academy at the Swedish Transport Administration and Niti Aayog, National Institution of Transforming India.