Promotion of mobility and safety of vulnerable road users

The mobility needs of pedestrians, cyclists and motorised two-wheelers, are not integrated automatically in the planning for traffic and transport in Europe. As a consequence, safety policies often have a curative approach, which may restrict the mobility of these vulnerable road users. Safety analysis shows that in Europe as a whole, the risk of a fatal accident per kilometre travelled is highest for riders of motorised two-wheelers. Young car drivers have a higher risk of a fatal accident per kilometre travelled than pedestrians and cyclists of the same age do. The European research project PROMISING aimed at developing measures to improve both safety and mobility of vulnerable road users. The potential for problem reduction was specified for four target groups of vulnerable road users: pedestrians, cyclists, motorised two-wheelers (i.e. motorcyclists and riders of mopeds) and young car drivers. The differences between European countries in their transport modes were taken into consideration. The PROMISING project was carried out by SWOV, NTUA (Greece), VTT (Finland), BASt (Germany), TRL (U.K.), INRETS (France), KfV(Austria), VV (Netherlands), SNRA (Sweden), ENFB (Netherlands), I-ce (Netherlands / U.K.), CERTU (France), IfZ (Germany), UdB (Italy), UNIROMA (Italy), and TØI (Norway).