Sustainable Transportation and Road Safety

Dear Colleagues,

Road traffic deaths and injuries represent a global public health epidemic. This epidemic has reached crisis proportions and is set to worsen over the years ahead. Therefore, huge efforts are being invested in order to improve road safety. 

It is widely recognized that road safety is a complex phenomenon depending on many factors including road infrastructure, human factors, vehicle design, travel model, urban planning, and exposure to risk factors, which can represent the daily activity patterns.

Involvement in road crashes derives from the need to travel for various purposes: the more traveling, the more risk exposure, while the risk exposure varies by the amount of travel , the types of road users or traffic modes, and their composition in traffic.  For example, given the same amount of travel, the injury rates of motorcycle riders, cyclists, and pedestrians are substantially higher than those of car drivers or passengers, and this finding is common for many countries. In addition, given the same amount of travel, the injury rates by public transport are substantially lower than those of car drivers or passengers. Consequently, the more we use private cars and active modes, the higher the risks. Sustainable transportation seeks to decrease dependence on the private car and increase the dependence on  active modes, such as cycling and walking and public transportation. Ride sharing is another mode that can decrease the dependence on individual car use. Encouraging the use of active modes requires an appropriate and safe built environment, and preferring public transport over private cars depends on the extent of the attractiveness of the PT, which is measured by many factors, including travel time, cost, comfort, reliability, price, and others. While human factors are widely considered to be responsible for the majority of road crashes, the development of  modern transportation technologies, “Smart transportation”,  will control the influence of the human factor, and as a result will lead to improvements in road safety and decrease the rate of road crashes.

These technologies aim to provide innovative services relating to different modes of transport and traffic management, and enable users to be better informed and make safer and “smarter” use of transport networks. A “safer” transportation system implies a lower accident and injury risk. Smart transportation is expected to impose changes on traffic exposure, and possibly on road user behavior, vehicle performance, and road infrastructure features. Changes in these factors may impact the transportation system's safety.

Transportation is a major influencer in reaching sustainability. It can lead to major reductions in our dependence on fossil fuels through the move to electric modes. A move towards shared rides and active modes of transport will reduce the discharge of pollutants. It will also have a major impact on health through the increased share of cycling and walking. At the same time, the road safety impacts of such changes should be monitored and evaluated.

This Special Issue aims to present state-of-the-art research related to recent advances in sustainable transportation and road safety. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Urban mobility patterns and road safety
• Road safety in a sustainable urban mobility
• Innovative services and the system’s safety
• Safety impacts of vehicle automation
• Level of vehicle  automation and road safety
• Safety and automation for vulnerable road users
• safety challenges and technological solutions for the human operator (drivers) in their interaction with AV systems, at various stages of transition to automation.
• Connectivity, automation and road safety

Prof. Dr. Wafa Elias
Prof. Dr. Shalom Hakkert
Dr. Victoria Gitelman
Guest Editors

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