A Conceptual Framework for Risk Assessment in Road Safety of Vulnerable Users

Abstract

The risk-based engineering analyzes, created mainly to activate forecasting and prevention measures in response to the damage generated by natural disasters, have been extended to many other sectors. One of these is that relating to road safety. Over the last few decades, the European Union has pushed towards a noticeable improvement in road safety (EU roads are the safest in the world), but there are still too many deaths and injuries. It must be said that all the procedures and measures implemented so far in the road sector are aimed at reducing the hazard of the motorized component. In fact, the advent of ITS onboard devices has enormously improved the safety of drivers and passengers, but almost nothing has been done to protect vulnerable users. Although car manufacturers are recently pay more attention to this latter issue, road safety engineers can play a critical role in identifying and evaluating the various accident scenarios and then selecting optimal countermeasures. In this paper, following a review of risk based methodologies, an original risk-based methodological approach is proposed for pedestrian. The ultimate goal is to bring, as requested by the European Community, a drastic reduction in the number and consequences of accidents involving vulnerable users.