PREDIT (Programme de Recherche et d'Innovation dans les Transports Terrestres) is a programme for the coordination of French research and innovation policies on land transportation (road, rail and inland waterway). It is the result of an agreement between three ministries in charge of research, transport and industry and three agencies (ANR, ADEME, OSEO) that wished to combine their efforts to encourage research.
The final crossroads of Predit 4 marks the completion of a 6-year cycle (2008/2013) on 7-8 October 2013 at Palais Brongniart. It takes stock of this inter-ministerial mechanism dedicated to ensuring the coherence of public actions to mobilize research and innovation in land transportation, involving all partners : industry, operators, local authorities, shippers and users, as well as the research community (academic, industrial, scientific and technical network of the ministry for transport).
PREDIT 4 in a nutshell
PREDIT 4 ran from 2008 to 2012. Extended by one year, it ends with a review/perspective day on 7 and 8 October 2013.
PREDIT makes it possible to coordinate the incentive actions of the Ministries and Agencies involved. The ministry for transport is a signatory to the memorandum of understanding involving three central directorates: the DRI, the DGTIM and the DSR.
Cerem (SETRA at the time) and IFSTTAR are members of the Strategic Orientation Council.
Following on from Predit 3 (2002/2006), Predit 4 aimed to develop technologies, services, knowledge and tools for public policies. It covered the field of land transportation (road, rail, inland waterways) as well as interfaces with sea and air, which made the topic of road safety, which was a separate objective of PREDIT 3, less visible (with two branches : GO3: new knowledge for safety and GO4: technology for safety).
PREDIT 4 was structured around 6 priorities, each of which is the subject of an operational group (GO) for the implementation of programming.
- Energy and environment
- Quality and safety of transport systems
- Mobility in urban areas
- Logistics and freight transport
- Competitiveness of the transport industry
- Transport policies
GO 2 dealt with road safety.
Presentation of the Operational Group 2 (GO2) : Quality and safety of transport systems
Operational Group 2 was led by a board chaired by René Amalberti, supported by two vice-presidents and a lead secretary of the "Transport" mission of the Research and Innovation Directorate, which financed calls for projects for GO2. Co-Secretaries represented other funders of research : the Road Safety Directorate (DSR), the ANR, the Ministry of Finance. The presidents and vice-presidents were experts in the field, involved on a "voluntary" basis in these functions.
The aim was to respond to disruptions that have a lasting impact on research on the quality and safety of transport systems:
- the Grenelle de l'environnement (sustainable development and participatory democracy)
- the financial and economic crisis
- new road safety challenges with a target of halving the number of fatalities by 2020 in the strategic guidelines adopted by the European Union for the coming decade (2011 - 2020)
- the evolution of mobility (PTW in particular) and consequences on congestion
- the creation of new multimodal transport chains
- the ageing population and its management in the field of transport
- the issues of ever-increasing surveillance and its acceptability.
GO2 selected 6 research topics:
- Traffic management ;
- Displacement chain: a point of view on breaks;
- Maintaining mobility and reducing exclusions;
- Road safety: the challenges of deployment;
- Railways: from safety innovation to safety constrained optimization;
- Safety and global surveillance.
Road safety research projects in GO2
GO2 structured its work around 4 safety directions (according to the PREDIT white paper):
- knowledge about accidents and risk exposure (PTW accidentology, recorder operation, epidemiology and driving disability)
- improving the prevention and reliability of interactions in the road safety system
(technological developments to improve road safety extended to include environmental and energy saving issues)
- social cohesion and sustainable development
(social equity, coherence of public policies, road education and eco-driving)
- observation and evaluation tools
(observatory of accident situations, behaviours and locations; evaluation of system effectiveness; socio-economic evaluations)
In the end, 34 projects related to road safety were financed (see Annex 1). Of these projects, two were funded directly by the DSCR:
ESPARR-ECO : Economic and social damage to road traffic injuries: a victim-based approach, based on data from the ESPARR cohort
MA[IFSTTAR], GUILBOT Michèle
AJAR: Legal aspects of compliance assistance
These two projects were part of the emergence of the "Road Safety Economics" theme, the result of a fairly long process, initially supported by the DRI and the DSCR, which had a strong desire to promote the creation of a research community on this theme. The emergence of this theme was brought about after an initial observation, in 2004-2005, that there was little work related to the economics of road safety, and a question: how to develop this field?
A book was published «— Économie de la sécurité routière : enjeux, état des lieux et réflexions prospectives, M. Gaudry, Y. Geffrin, F. Johansson, M. de Lapparent, M. Lericolais, D. Mignot, D. Schwarz as a result of the 2008 seminars and research projects launched during this period.
It also took the form of a call for tenders named "Road safety economics". Launched jointly with the Road Safety Directorate (DSR), this call for projects of the DRI was closed on 30 March 2009. A budget of €600k was set aside for the funding of the selected research projects. 8 projects were submitted during this call, 7 of which led by IFSTTAR.
Two other books were published during PREDIT 4 :
- Attention et somnolence au volant, L. Bronner
- Accidents de la route, infrastructures et responsabilités, M. Guilbot
Another key topic emerged regarding the ageing population, as in many countries the mobility of older people becomes a widely sharedissue. This topic was the subject of a call for tenders, which closed on 14 March 2010 and received 16 project proposals. Two projects are particularly relevant to road safety:
MG-CogCAPA: Detection in general medicine of cognitive disorders that may affect driving in the elderly - Sylviane Lafont
ASPAM: Aging and spatial memory; consequences and strategies in driving - Olivier Despres and André Dufour
In total, DSR funded 6 projects for a total of 550,000 euros. In addition to the two projects already mentioned, the following 4 other projects were added:
- Valuation of research and pedagogical expertise
- Feasibility study for the production of a documentary film on new communication methods in the field of Road Safety
- The value of personal injury: an economic perspective on the methods to evaluate and the harmonization of their repair
- DRAM - In-depth research data on PTW.
Discover more and download the pdf file in French "Evaluation Predit 4".