Advancing road safety for VRUs and active mobility

17 March 2025

The EU-funded ‘ Predictive Approaches for Safer Urban Environment ’ (PHOEBE) Project aims to increase the road safety of vulnerable road users (VRUs), especially those who use active mobility and e-scooters. It is building on the strengths of iRAP’s road safety assessment tools and AIMSUN’s simulation and Artificial Intelligence to deliver harmonised, integrated and world-leading safety prediction tools that take account of gender, age and ability levels in providing for future mobility.

Pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users face complex road safety challenges navigating daily journeys. The first webinar of the EU Road Safety Cluster was presented in February, attended by more than 90 stakeholders. Even though all six cluster projects have the same aim of reducing crashes and fatalities, each project presented a different facet of road safety innovation:

• PHOEBE – developing an integrated, dynamic, human-centred predictive safety assessment framework
• SOTERIA – using novel data solutions to identify near misses and other actions around unsafe locations by utilising vehicle-, cell phone and micro-mobility data
• AI4CCAM – using a holistic approach to AI to assess automated driving and its user acceptance
• HEIDI – enhancing communication between vehicles and vulnerable road users, such as cyclists or pedestrians, by conveying information to both sides of the vehicle (inside and outside)
• FRODDO – advancing automated and connected mobility by developing safer, smarter, and more adaptable transportation systems using advanced sensing, AI, and digital twin simulations
• EVENTS – focussing on challenges that arise when Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) encounter complex situations that could disrupt their normal operation, such as dynamic traffic changes, harsh weather, sensor failures, or unstructured roads