ChallengeDCA with Direcció General d'Infraestructes de Mobilitat (DGIM)

C.4: Improve road safety to prevent occasional dangerous situations on the road, such as the presence of cyclists, wild boars and landslides

Goal of the challenge

The aim of this challenge is to apply new technologies to the roads to improve the specific safety of cyclists, and that of all road users in the face of collisions with obstacles caused by landslides or with animals invading the roadway.

Challenge's description

DGIM's strategic and primary objective is to improve safety in mobility infrastructures. In this regard, they have various lines of work they want to improve. Currently, they are working on different management systems that allow them to more efficiently impact the improvement of road safety (pavements, structures, geotechnical assets, etc.), they are working on the 2+1 road plan to reduce the risk of head-on collisions, and they conduct audits and road safety inspections.

The number of accidents involving wild animals, especially ungulates (wild boar, roe deer, fallow deer, etc.), has been increasing significantly in recent years (see figure 1 in the link). DGIM conducts periodic studies to identify areas with a high concentration of accidents involving ungulates (these studies are published on the department's website). All of this leads us to wonder: how can we alert drivers to the presence of danger (animals on the road) or prevent these animals from crossing the road? Ultimately, we need to reduce the number of accidents involving animals on our roads, which was 2,511 in 2020.

Accidents involving vulnerable road users, whether on motorcycles or bicycles, are also a significant problem on the road network. In the case of motorcycles, accidents with victims (fatal, serious or minor) on Generalitat roads account for approximately 25% of all accidents annually. If we focus on fatal and serious accidents, the involvement of vulnerable road users is even more significant. In 2019 (the last year with definitive data before the pandemic), motorcycles and mopeds were involved in 45.8% of fatal and serious accidents. Bicycles, on the other hand, were involved in 9% of fatal and serious accidents. The graph in Figure 1 of the link shows the trend from 2016-2020 (2020 was an abnormal year due to the pandemic and lockdowns).

Therefore, this call opens up the following main lines of work. It is not necessary to address all of them to participate:

• Improve the safety of cyclists, considered vulnerable users, by informing other road users of their presence in real-time.
• Improve road safety by informing users in real-time of invasions of lanes by wild animals (wild boars) or even by applying solutions to directly prevent them from crossing the road.
• Innovate in the field of signage and interactivity with the road to avoid the loss of the alert effect of traffic signs, and thus ensure user attention in the areas that require it the most.
• Inform of possible landslides on the road beyond conventional signage.

You can expand the information of this challenge through the following explanatory video

For any questions about participating in this ChallengeDCA challenge, send an email to challengedca@dca.cat and we will contact you as soon as possible.