Motivation
Modern society strongly depends on mobility, and the need for transport of both people and goods is expected to grow further in the future. Cleaner, safer and more efficient transport systems are needed. Mobility and especially road transport cause major societal problems: accidents, pollution and congestions. More than 40,000 lives are lost every year due to road accidents in the European Union only, and the costs are estimated to be about 2 % of its GDP [EC, 2001].
The European Commission and its member states have made major efforts to improve traffic safety, and the results can be seen in a decreasing number of fatalities in many European countries [European Transport Safety Council, 2003]. Nowadays, new ways must be found to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries even further. The public awareness of the enormous impact that active safety systems would have on road safety must be raised. It must be easy for the customer to understand the benefits of safety systems, which are based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
The average car buyer cannot assess the performance of active safety systems in vehicles, nor their impact on traffic safety. Today, there are no publicly accepted test methods and no established ways to communicate the test results. The situation is quite different for passive safety systems, where test programs such as Euro NCAP (Figure 1) have established impact test methods and ways to explain the test results in different levels of detail. While the car buyers may compare star ratings for passive safety between different cars, the professional safety engineer may compare measurement data from the tests.
Figure 1. Timeline of Active and Passive Safety
Going forward to the goal of accident free traffic, evaluation and standardised testing methods for active safety are essential. This is the main focus of the European research project "Testing and Evaluation Methods for ICT-based Safety Systems (eVALUE)" which is funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. It started in January 2008 and will close in December 2010. The consortium consists of eight partners from four European countries and is led by the Institut für Kraftfahrzeuge (ika) of RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
References
Commission of the European Communities: European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide. White Paper, Brussels, 2001
European Transport Safety Council: Transport Safety Performance in the EU - A Statistical Overview. Brussels, 2003