Road crashes in low- and middle-income countries kill and injure millions of people each year, and this research group will design and test practical interventions to reduce those numbers. The problem is that most road safety research and policy has been developed in high-income countries, where traffic patterns, vehicle types, and road infrastructure differ sharply from those in places like Bangladesh, Kenya, and China. This group—led by the University of Southampton’s Transportation Research Group, in partnership with institutions in those countries—will model how road systems currently perform, develop safety solutions tailored to local conditions, and evaluate them using simulated and naturalistic studies. The work covers all road users: pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and drivers of cars, vans, and lorries. If successful, the research could produce evidence-based interventions—such as changes to road design, traffic enforcement, or vehicle safety features—that reduce conflicts between road users and prevent deaths and serious injuries. The group also aims to build lasting research capacity in partner countries, so that local experts can continue improving road safety long after the project ends.
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The University of Southampton (UoS) is in the top one percent of world research-led universities, and is a founding member of the UK Russell Group. Its position as a top UK research university was reaffirmed in 2014 following the publication of the national Research Excellence Framework (REF), which found 84% of UoS’ research activity to be internationally excellent/of world-leading quality. Central to this achievement are our international collaborations. UoS’ overarching mission is to ‘change the world for the better’ sustained by continuing to strengthen the societal impact of our research. Tackling the global issue of road safety for improved public health, particularly within LMICs, supports this mission. TRG is the locus for the University’s interdisciplinary transport research, enterprise, and knowledge exchange, with links across Faculties (including Medicine) and with local and national stakeholders. TRG sits within the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment (FEE), which ranked top in the UK for its Research Power Index in General Engineering (2014 REF). TRG (est.1967) is the UK’s first centre for transport research and teaching, and is amongst the leaders in the field. TRG has a long standing history in road safety research, centring on three core themes: Road accident predictive modelling, vulnerable road user behaviour and protection, and driver behaviour. Moreover, TRG has been central in advising on national road safety policy and practice (e.g. Hickford and Hall, 2004; 2009), and is a member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. TRG’s aim is to secure safer and more sustainable transport systems, both nationally and globally; viewing transport as a socio-technical system, addressing the interaction between technology (vehicles, infrastructure, informatics etc.) and society (users, operators, Government etc.). See: Research Capacity section for more detail. For the successful delivery of GHRG’s aims we have partnered with three leading academics in the Faculty of Medicine (ranked second by intensity-weighted grade-point average in UoA2, REF14), incl. Prof. Roderick, who sits on the steering group of the University’s Global Health Research Institute and Prof. Deakin who is employed by the NHS Trust as the Divisional Medical Director for Hampshire's South Central Ambulance Service. The GHRG builds on pre-existing links in LMICs at UoS. These include those with: Prof. Wu and Tsinghua University (links with the UK-China Intelligent Transport Systems Centre), BUET, (established by UoS on climate change, sea level rise, and their impact on delta regions); NUCE (established by Prof. Preston); Strathmore, established by Prof. Stanton in a previous project training Human Factors (HF) methods for a medical application. Three of these links are continued by TRG alumni at the overseas institution. The UoS has a strong track record of working in international projects, especially in the European Framework Programme. Recently, TRG has partnered with: other European Universities on HF in Automated Automobiles (e.g. Chalmers, Sweden; Delft, The Netherlands; IFSTTAR, France; and TUM, Munich), which aims to improve road safety via vehicle automation; and UK Universities on vehicle automation (e.g. EPSRC/JLR funded TASCC programme, incl. Birmingham, Cambridge, Surrey, and UCL). Whilst these projects focus on automobile automation, road safety is a key priority. The current STARS proposal aims to investigate broader aspects of road safety, sharing some of the methods and approaches used in the current projects on automation. A three-phased approach is proposed to model current road system performance, develop road safety solutions, and evaluate these using simulated and naturalistic studies. The research will focus on all road user groups (e.g. pedestrians; cyclists; motorcyclists; car, van, and lorry drivers) to develop sustainable interventions to reduce conflicts between road users. In Phas
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