SAFER contributed to Transportforum 2020: Women are not as protected as men in traffic and continued dialogue about traffic safety in a future mobility system
At the annual Transportforum event in Linköping, January 8-9, 2020, which brings together the Swedish transport and mobility community, SAFER hosted no less than three sessions and workshops.
Behavioral changes are important to achieving the UN's sustainability goals and this was also the theme of Transportforum 2020. It was about how to influence people's behavior to choose more sustainable alternatives, and so much more of course. About 1,700 delegates attended the annual conference.
The law requires cars to protect only men
Regulations requires that all new car models are crash tested before they reach the market. But the crash test dummies used in the mandatory tests today are built after a man's body. Research shows that the male stature cannot represent the population as a whole. Several studies performed within the SAFER network conclude that the risk for a woman to be seriously injured in an accident with the same crash forces is about twice as high as for a man. SAFER contributed to this year's edition of the conference with sharing knowledge about this research and presented a vision that by 2030, the injury protection performances of new cars will be assessed for both women and men.
Magnus Granström, SAFER’s director, sums up the days:
“During these two intense days we have clearly demonstrated, and got confirmed, how important it is to have an attractive and well-functioning collaboration platform to secure that the future traffic system will be both sustainable and safe”.
Forthcoming research programme within EU
Another of the SAFER sessions was about road safety In Europe's upcoming framework for research and innovation - Horizon Europe.
“Entering 2020 we are one year closer to the next framework program, Horizon Europe, and numerous activities have and are taking place in order to support the upcoming R&I programme”, says Magnus.
This session gave an up-to-date overview of the Horizon programmes, focusing on road safety. Relevant roadmaps from the technology platform for road transport research, ERTRAC, and EARPA, the European Automotive Research Providers Association, was presented, see the complete presentation below.
Workshop about Road safety aspects in future mobility
Finally, SAFER was also organising a workshop linked to the upcoming 3rd ministerial conference on Road safety in Stockholm in February; “Ensure safety in future mobility - prospects, trends, and technology”. Prior to the conference, an academic expert group has prepared nine recommendations to help us achieve the global road safety objectives together. This workshop was based on recommendation number nine, which is about taking advantage of technology development and its potential to contribute to road safety.
Presentations from all the three sessions are available below!
