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Worldwide, 1.2 million people die in road crashes yearly; 43,000 just in Europe. This implies a cost to the European society of approximately 160 billion euro, making use of 10% of all health care resources. Sharp objects like crash barriers may lead vulnerable road users into serious injuries. Different road restraint system designs have been developed in recent years to improve vulnerable road users' safety. SMART RRS is an FP7 SST 2007 RTD1 European collaborative project funded by the EC with the participation of 10 institutions from 5 countries.

There are a variety of approaches and development projects centered on platooning. IDIADA is currently involved in the SARTRE Project, which is part of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development of the European Commission. This project has helped to establish some important concepts which show why platooning systems are a good way to increase safety and reduce pollution on tomorrow's highways. IDIADA's activities within the project have led to performing virtual testing of the fuel consumption that a platoon achieves due to better aerodynamics. Also, dynamic simulations of how a platoon would behave in certain normal and emergency situations have been made. The validation trials for the project will demonstrate the qualities and benefits of platooning as a safe and eco-friendly option for the mobility of tomorrow.

The SARTRE Project is an FP7 European collaborative project funded by the EC with the participation of 7 entities from 4 countries. The SARTRE project focuses on the design, set up, evaluation and validation of road train systems that do not require modification to the actual road infrastructure, making use of available technologies for in-vehicle applied systems. The SARTRE project will define a set of acceptable platooning strategies that will allow road trains to operate on public highways without changes to the road and roadside infrastructure therefore enhancing, developing and integrating technologies for a prototype platooning system such that the defined strategies can be assessed under real world scenarios. Also, the project will show how the use of platoons can lead to environmental, safety and congestion improvements.

Worldwide, 1.2 million people die in road crashes yearly; 43,000 in Europe alone. This implies a cost to European society of approximately 160 billion euros, and takes up 10% of all healthcare resources. To reduce these rates, safety technologies have been developed which help to minimize the severity of injuries to vehicle occupants. However, studies have shown that most deaths due to road accidents occur in the time between the accident and the arrival of medical care. Therefore, a fast and efficient rescue operation would significantly increase the injured person's probability of survival. The aim of this project was to define the On-Board Unit (OBU) hardware and software installed in all modern vehicles which could request medical and technical support after a road accident. This device, based on the information from the vehicle sensors, automatically decides whether the car has suffered a road accident or not, the severity of the accident and the kind of accident (impact area).