Towards the European Commission’s Road Safety Goal of"Vision Zero": Intended Routes of the SOTERIA Journey

The emergence of complex urban mobility environments, where unknown interactions between different types of vulnerable road users (VRUs) and between VRUs and motorised vehicles, poses the need for a clear understanding of user behaviours, fair and optimised use of public spaces, as well as age-friendly urban safety action plans and assessments, capitalising on the benefits that technological innovations and the plethora of available data can offer in advanced accident analysis, towards achieving EU’s ‘Vision Zero’ goal of zero fatalities on European roads by 2050. The SOTERIA project aims to accelerate the attainment of this goal for VRUs through a holistic framework of innovative models, tools and services that enable data-driven road safety intelligence, facilitate safe travelling of VRUs and foster the safe integration of micro-mobility services in complex urban environments. At the operational level, the SOTERIA project uncovers unexplored behavioural characteristics of VRUs and engages Living Lab communities (based in Germany, Greece, Spain and the United Kingdom) in social innovation activities for the co-creation of urban safety solutions and infrastructure designs. Simulation models and explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven analytics are developed for supporting policy decisions and informing interconnected services that support VRUs in safe and clean travelling. On-vehicle sensors and connectivity are fostered enabling minimisation of risky situations and behaviours. The approach will be validated in four thematic demonstrations within the SOTERIA network of cities, addressing different types of motorised VRUs (e.g. motorcycle, e-motorcycle, moped, e-moped, e-bicycle, e-scooter, hover-board (Segway), mobility scooter riders) and non-motorised VRUs (e.g. bicycle, scooter, skateboard and horse/pony riders, wheelchair users, babies/toddlers in prams, joggers, pedestrians). This article maps out the routes and inter-linkages of the activities and investigative axes that the project will take on its journey from 2022 to 2026, plus the expected impacts that will benchmark the project’s successes.