Road Safety, Traffic Behaviors and Sustainable Transportation Planning

Dear Colleagues,

“Transportation” is the backbone of modern society, driving economic development, enhancing social mobility, facilitating territorial integration, and ensuring access to essential services. Nevertheless, with these advantages come substantial challenges. Road accidents claim approximately 1.19 million lives annually and remain the leading cause of death among children and young adults. Urban congestion costs drivers over 40 hours per year—exceeding 100 hours in the world's most congested cities—resulting in billions of dollars in lost productivity. Beyond safety and efficiency concerns, transportation also has environmental impacts.

The current academic landscape presents unprecedented opportunities for advancing road safety, sustainable transportation planning, and mobility research. The convergence of technological innovation, urgent policy needs, and sophisticated methodological approaches creates an ideal environment for research that advances both scientific knowledge and the practical implementation of safer, more sustainable transportation systems. We particularly value interdisciplinary perspectives that bridge engineering, psychology, public health, environmental science, urban planning, economics, data science, and policy studies, recognizing that the complex challenges of modern transportation systems require collaborative insights from multiple fields of expertise.

This Special Issue welcomes cutting-edge contributions employing diverse methodological approaches, including quantitative modeling, qualitative case studies, mixed-methods research, and simulation analyses. We welcome high-quality original research articles and comprehensive reviews addressing the multifaceted challenges of modern transportation systems. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Road safety interventions and accident prediction models;
• Infrastructure design and vulnerable road user protection;
• Driver behavior analysis and traffic psychology;
• Environmental impact assessment and mitigation;
• Multi-modal integration and urban mobility planning;
• AI-powered systems, autonomous vehicles, and ITS;
• Connected vehicle technologies and heavy vehicle safety;
• Evidence-based policy development and governance;
• Economic analyses of interventions;
• Implementation case studies.

We encourage submissions from researchers across all disciplines. Your contributions will advance the scientific understanding of transportation safety and sustainability, directly informing evidence-based policies and interventions. By disseminating rigorous research through this platform, authors will contribute to the critical transformation of global transportation systems—ultimately reducing fatalities, mitigating environmental impacts, and enhancing mobility efficiency worldwide.

Prof. Dr. Mariano Pernetti
Guest Editor

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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability 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 2400 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.