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Innovation and city design for urban road safety

From 29 september till 2 October the Urban Mobility Days 2020 took place online. Astrid Linder, VIRTUAL project coordinator, spoke during the session on the 1st of October: ‘Innovation and city design for urban road safety’.

It turned out to be a very interesting session on road safety and innovation in urban areas chaired by Wiebke Pankauke from DG-MOVE. The session attracted around 50 participants from organisations such as local/regional authorities, national governments, industry and consulting firms. The session also engaged experts on urban road safety from academia and the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC). A number of good questions came from the audience which led to interesting discussions. The work done in VIRTUAL is an important contribution towards reaching Vision Zero.

This session highlighted the importance of innovation in improving urban road safety as well as the crucial role that city and urban design play in mitigating road transport injury burden at a global scale. While advances have been achieved in recent years to reduce accidents in cities and urban areas, progress is still far from satisfactory to European citizens. An Eurobarometer survey (2013) showed that 73% of European citizens consider road safety to be a serious problem in cities.

Watch ‘Innovation and city design for urban road safety’ below: