Road Design for Road Safety and Future Mobility

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to serve as a starting point for further exploring and developing the crucial theme of road design, looking toward both the future and road safety. Roads are, in fact, the most widely used transport infrastructure; yet, road travel continues to cause an excessively high number of accidents, resulting in deaths, injuries, and unacceptable social costs.

Simultaneously, with the development and increasing diffusion of autonomous vehicles, it is essential to provide useful tools for safe design. Such tools must facilitate autonomous vehicle operation, ensure adequate safety levels, and ultimately take the advent of new technologies into consideration.

Consequently, we are pleased to invite you to submit your paper for publication in this Special Issue. In line with the journal's scope, submissions should address innovations in road design, specifically encompassing innovative design approaches, emerging technologies, and road design tailored for autonomous vehicles.

We welcome original research articles and reviews for this Special Issue. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Improvements in Geometric Design Concepts: New vehicle performance data and years of road design experience may prompt researchers to explore novel design methods. Research in this direction is highly encouraged.
• The Advent of Autonomous Vehicles: Autonomous vehicles have begun navigating our roads, while all new human-driven vehicles are equipped with Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), making them increasingly automated. Roads must adapt to this change and must be easily legible by vehicle systems. Papers addressing road design improvements and their effectiveness estimation that tackle this topic are highly encouraged.
• Safe Design for All Road Users: Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), including powered two- and three-wheelers, remain a major safety concern. Research suggesting new safety measures and interaction management between the different types of road users (also in the transition period with automated vehicles) to be included in road design for the improvement of VRU safety is definitely welcome.
• Road Network Safety Assessments and Automation Readiness Level Assessment: Assessing a road's current safety level is the critical first step toward improving the design process. The same principle applies to identifying the readiness level for introducing automated and autonomous vehicles. Research on these two topics is highly valued.
• Policy for Road Planning and Management: We also welcome policy papers that address innovative, high-level approaches in the field of road design, monitoring, and maintenance, focusing on policy decisions that can influence road safety or consider the integration of new technologies also related to the AVs equipment.
• Virtual reality studies for better design: Simulations critically help in defining a new approach to designing both safer vehicles and safer roads. Studies and experimentations involving the use of simulations to pave the way for new design standards are welcome.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Andrea Paliotto
Dr. Adriano Alessandrini
Dr. Monica Meocci
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Future Transportation is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.