Our latest iRAP in Europe metrics are in and we congratulate European partners for achieving 1.8 million kilometres of road infrastructure safety assessments in 38 countries, training of more than 11,000 people, and a safety influence in 46 countries through investment, training and ViDA usage – that’s a footprint in 94% of the region!

European road authority, city administration and development bank partners have now enhanced the safety of over €25 billion of road investments with their iRAP assessments. The upgrades are saving lives and preventing serious injuries every single day and helping countries reach the UN targets to halve road deaths and injuries by 2030. This includes the recent £47.5 million boost to the Department for Transport’s Safer Roads Fund for investment to prevent deaths and serious injuries on England’s local road network.

Twice a year (in June and December), iRAP analyses its global systems and consults with European program leads to prepare a comprehensive analysis of partner activity to make roads safer in the region.

Thanks to the support of our major donor the FIA Foundation; program supporters Global Road Safety Facility, 3M, Prudence Foundation, European Investment Bank and FedEx; and incredible work of 5,900 partners in Europe, the results as at 30 June, are inspiring.

Informing the safety of road designs and upgrades

Across Europe, 1.5 million kilometres of risk mapping has been completed, added to in the last six months by Italy and Spain. Did you know 83% of the world’s risk mapping is undertaken by European countries and Spain, Catalonia and Great Britain have undertaken annual risk mapping for more than 20 years?

223,000km of roads and designs have been Star Rated. New countries added with iRAP Star Ratings in the last six months include Malta, United Kingdom, Italy and Slovenia.

Making road designs safe before construction commences is a key priority. Four regional experts from Croatia, Greece and the United Kingdom are members of iRAP’s Global Road Designers Consultation Group helping to test enhancements to the Star Rating for Designs (SR4D) web tool and inform activities to make road designs safer in Europe and the world.

Safer school journeys to protect vulnerable youth

Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among young people aged 15-29. Making school journeys safer for vulnerable youth is a regional priority. Sixteen (16) countries have undertaken Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) assessments and 91 schools have been Star Rated across Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. These are informing evidence-based infrastructure upgrades saving children’s lives every day. A recent success story has been celebrated for Georgia where four school zones received a 5-star upgrades thanks to the FIA Road Safety Grants Program and the FIA Foundation, which together supported the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport (EASST), Partnership for Road Safety (PfRS) and the Georgian Automobile Sport Federation (GASF). EASST, FIA and FIA Foundation has also been involved in speed management infrastructure recently piloted around schools in Moldova. This links with the Government of Moldova’s approved amendments to the National Road Regulations mandating that all school zones should have a default maximum speed limit of 30km/h.

European partners are benefiting from global improvements to the SR4S tools with: enhancements launched to the SR4S model integrating the latest research and user experience for improved results; updates to the SR4S mobile app with availability now on Google Play and the Apple Store; and the launch and integration of the Youth Engagement App (YEA) as part of the Botnar Ai&Me project to capture supplementary youth perceptions of risk.

Building capacity for safe roads

Road safety capacity has grown substantially in Europe with 8,206 people trained at events delivered locally and 2,966 receiving global/online training in the iRAP Methodology and tools. iRAP training has been provided in 19 languages across the world including Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Montenegrin, Persian, Polish, Russian and Slovenian.

Along with project-related trainings since January, European partners contributed to the April EuroRAP Lunchtime Seminar on the Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive and RAPKnowledgeLIVE sessions on the Route Review Tool and Star Rating for Designs.

iRAP’s 10th annual Innovation Workshop will be held from 5-6 October in Prague. It is being held in association with the XXVIIth World Road Congress from 2-6 October organised by PIARC (World Road Association) and the Czech Road Society, supported by the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Road Association.

To see RAP training opportunities and recordings of recent webinars, visit https://irap.org/training/. Many courses are available in online, self-paced format.

Innovation and delivery to the global standard

52 practitioners in 15 countries are iRAP Accredited to deliver iRAP specification services to the global standard. 100% of the feedback forms returned on iRAP Accredited Practitioners rated their performance as excellent or very good. See European accredited practitioners at https://irap.org/accreditation/

3,152 engineers are using the ViDA global software to analyse the safety of European road infrastructure and prepare strategic investment plans to eliminate high-risk road sections for road users. ViDA has recently been enhanced with an extra set of urban countermeasures thanks to a project by the UK’s Road Safety Foundation, funded by The Road Safety Trust.

The iRAP Innovation Framework is supporting 111 partners in projects and initiatives to create the global and local tools to meet local needs and ensure continuous improvement of the iRAP offering. European partners are benefiting from these partnerships. The iRAP Safety Insights Explorer includes new iRAP Star Rating and key performance metrics, new estimates of the types of road crash injuries that occur in each country that can be split by age group and sex, and new regional filters, including for the EU, WHO regions of Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, and European and Eastern Partnership Road Safety Observatories.

Lots of activity has occurred in the area of safe cycling and light mobility. Four trusted suppliers are now in place to support CycleRAP projects and FRED Engineering was the first to complete a pilot in Rome on new cycling infrastructure in a tunnel on Via di Porta Cavalleggeri. The last six months has also seen the CycleRAP Demonstrator tool launched to support the quick assessment of cycling infrastructure safety. A pilot project has commenced with Fundacion Mapfre, the Union Cyclist Internationale and PTV to design safer streets and networks for cycling and light mobility in the five cities of Barcelona, Bogotá, Fayetteville, Madrid and São Paulo.

3-star or better policy

Fifteen (15) European policies include iRAP metrics for safety including national strategies and action plans for Georgia, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Russia and the United Kingdom. See the global showcase at https://irap.org/policies-into-practice/.

The last six months have been very busy in the strategic projects space, developing assessment data, investment plans and tool innovations. Some notable multi-national collaborations include: the EU-funded project PHOEBE which aims to develop an integrated, dynamic, human-centred, predictive safety assessment framework for vulnerable road users in urban areas in three pilot cities/counties of Athens, Valencia and West Midlands; and the recently launched ELABORATOR project for designing sustainable urban mobility towards climate neutral cities’ in Europe.

Partnerships for impact

The iRAP community in Europe continues to grow month by month. 5,905 people from 2,206 organisations across Europe are working together to improve the safety of the region’s roads.

20 European national RAPs exist and the United Kingdom’s success was recently shared at the Presidency booth of the International Transport Forum.

iRAP’s Safer Journeys Specialist for Europe Samar Abouraad said, “It has been a very busy time since January as we’ve worked to support partners to implement the RISM Directive and undertaken a stakeholder survey. The survey aims to understand European partner needs and shape the future of collaboration to halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030.

“We are now preparing an exciting “RAP in Europe: Advancing Road Infrastructure Safety towards 2030” event to be held 25-26 September and look forward to bringing partners together to share best practice and strategies for achieving ambitious national, European and global road safety targets,” she said.

The European program is the local program of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), a global charity with a vision for a world free of high-risk roads. iRAP works with local RAPs, governments, development banks, mobility clubs, industry, research organisations and road safety NGOs to provide them with the free global methodology, tools, training and support to make their roads safer. iRAP assessments have been completed 128 countries, and infrastructure safety is being influenced in 174 countries through investment, training and ViDA usage. Worldwide, iRAP and its partners have influenced the safety of over USD$100 billion dollars of infrastructure investment, Star Rated 1.5 million kilometres of roads and designs, plus 1,229 schools, Risk Mapped 1.8 million kilometres, and trained over 63,000 people. iRAP is the umbrella program for road assessment programs including United Kingdom RAP, ChinaRAP, AusRAP, usRAP, KiwiRAP, IndiaRAP, BrazilRAP, South Africa RAP, ThaiRAP, TanRAP and MyRAP.

iRAP CEO Rob McInerney said, “We can create a world free of high-risk roads together. The life-saving impact of our European partners, and those around the world, in the last six months alone is inspirational and shows what is possible. Road upgrades are saving lives by the thousands, and we can all be proud of that life-saving success.”