Knowledge centre

Road safety research studies on the French territory or carried out by French research institutes are visible here.

Since 1910, the field of accidentology has been involved and associated with trauma. It was not until 1968 that the term "accidentology" entered the vocabulary. Public research gets organised as well as the private sector (manufacturers and insurers). Then appear the key concepts and objects of research : "infrastructures", "behaviours" and "vehicles".

This science integrates domains relating to techniques and technologies (automotive, control), engineering (roads, kinetics, detection), health sciences (including neuro-sciences) and clinical pharmacology. Its interdisciplinarity also extends to the fields of economic and human sciences, with preventive and educational content updated on a continuous basis in line with the improvement of knowledge.

The interdisciplinarity of road safety requires that research and study organisations work together.

Ifsttar and Cerema are the main actors of the scientific and technical network, as well as Inserr, CNRS laboratories, Inserm, ISPED and university teams. UTAC is approved to carry out homologation tests on vehicles and their equipment. Research and Development (carmakers, equipment manufacturers) is present in particular through the LAB and Ceesar. A public-private partnership is created with the Road Safety Foundation. Incentive to the Research also comes from calls for projects from the ANR (National Research Agency), foundations such as MAIF, VINCI, and in 2017 from the Road Safety Directorate.

knowledge centre