MeBeSafe

Measures for Behaving Safely in Traffic

MeBeSafe is a H2020 RIA project, granted by the European Commission and coordinated by the Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika). The consortium is comprised of 15 partners including automotive OEMs and suppliers, road infrastructure and fleet owners, SMEs, and leading organizations in traffic safety research and modeling. The project has a strong focus on human factors in transportation involving vulnerable road users (VRU) to tackle “human errors” as one major cause for accidents in road transportation.

Most current measures to increase safety in road transportation intend to make traffic users to behave safer by appealing to the deliberate self (awareness campaigns, speed signs), act autonomously on the users’ behalf (autonomous braking, traffic lights), or seek to “assist” users by presenting feedback/information (Forward Collision Warning, roadside speed displays). However, the latter category of measures is often not effective as users either switch them off or do not act on the information provided.

By addressing “human errors”, the project MeBeSafe is based on the idea that human behavior neither requires elaborate, conscious decision-making, nor purely automatic/reflexive actions. Hence, the project takes another approach by aiming at changing habitual traffic behavior directly using nudging. A concept adapted from behavioral economics that relates to subconsciously pushing humans in a desired direction without being prohibitive against alternative choices of action. Predisposing humans to making a desired choice makes nudging measures less invasive and - as a strong benefit - applicable early in a given chain of events that might lead to a critical/accident-prone situation.

Within MeBeSafe the consortium researched, planned, and implemented several nudging- and coaching-measures in different facets of road transportation, aiming at increasing safety in a measurable way. The project implemented nudging measures for road infrastructure (i.e. through an adaptive in-road surface light system), in-vehicle ADAS, and measures like coaching. ika led the work package infrastructure nudging measures , where weanalyzed the effectiveness of selected measures via controlled experiments in our driving simulator and led the field test with almost 200.000 vehicles in real traffic in the Netherlands.

Press releases

03.09.2019: MeBeSafe – Consortium presents final results on nudging and coaching measures in traffic

30.10.2019: MeBeSafe nudges literally on the road

15.02.2018: Starting Point for Measurement Activities for Improving Traffic Safety within the EU Project MeBeSafe in Eindhoven

18.08.2017: MeBeSafe ─ Making traffic safer through behaviour-changing nudging measures