## Context

Nowadays, smart technologies allow to connect and automate the cars and other vehicles, aiming to improve the road safety, as most road accidents are currently caused by humans (Lives, 2016). The new 'urban policy initiative' encourages cities to move towards a more sustainable transport system, encouraging walking, cycling and public transport and will introduce better monitoring of road deaths (EU Commission, 2020). European Parliament (2021) has initiated a Report on Road Safety (Commission, 2020; Zu et al., 2022), which contributes to the EU's long-term vision to move as close as possible to zero fatalities in road transport by 2050 (Vision Zero). Other road safety indicators can be derived based on the number of road fatalities to evaluate road safety across countries (Navin et al., 1996; Wegman & Hagenzieker, 2010).

The world's road safety is in crisis (Wegman, 2017; WHO, 2022). Approximately 1.3 million people die each year due to road traffic crashes, with more than half of all road traffic deaths being pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Globally, the number of road fatalities per 100 thousand people (road fatality rate) ranges from less than 3 to almost 40; however, some countries are hit harder than others, depending on the country (Wegman, 2017; Wegman & Hagenzieker, 2010). For example, 6000 children died on EU roads in ten years (ETSC, 2022). In EU countries, almost 19 thousand persons were killed in road accidents in 2020, with a ratio of 42 fatalities per million inhabitants; which is lower than in 2019, reflecting the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the use of road transport (Eurostat, 2022)