PROS · Priorities for Road Safety Research in Europe

In spite of all improvements in European road safety, almost 100 people are killed and about 40,000 get injured on European roads each day. The progress made so far is to a large extent based on intensive, publicly funded road safety research activities. While many “low-hanging fruits” in road safety have already been picked, a multitude of more specific research issues remains. With ICT opening up an enormous potential for new integrated safety applications, the research area of road safety is becoming broader and broader with the risk of diluting efforts.As a result of the political focus on the greening and electrification of road transport, the focus of European road transport research funding has moved away from safety topics increasing the need to identify those safety research topics which public money will be invested in most efficiently.Therefore, PROS is to establish a pan-European network to develop commonly agreed priorities in road safety research and overcome the current fragmentation in relevant stakeholder groups. This network will follow an integrated approach covering human, vehicle and infrastructure aspects and all phases from pre-ventive to post-crash safety.The PROS concept starts from the identification of future safety research needs based on a review of future societal scenarios as well as existing research activities, agendas and roadmaps. These research needs will be subject to a transparent prioritisation and roadmapping process with maximum involvement of key stakeholders. The outcomes will be widely disseminated together with identified success stories to all interested parties. Following an iterative optimisation, the whole process will be ready for the long-term continuation of activities in a pan-European multi-stakeholder network.Due to maximum stakeholder involvement, PROS will achieve a substantial impact in increasing the return on investment in road safety research by providing commonly-agreed priorities to focus on.