The development of road vehicles during the past decade has led to vehicles with improved passive safety. Airbags, seat belts and protective structures have increased safety for the drivers, passengers and lately also pedestrians. Testing programmes for assessment of these passive safety measures have been established. ICT-based safety functions (active safety ) such as electronic stability control (ESC) and lane departure warning (LDW) have been introduced.

The largest future improvements of road safety are expected to rely on such safety functions with the aim to prevent accidents from happening. The ICT-based functions are under rapid development and there is presently no generally accepted assessment programme in place. Several research and development initiatives are currently running both on European and national level within the Member States of the European Union. Examples of European research projects are the eVALUE project and the ASSESS project. There are also ongoing initiatives within EuroNCAP on an assessment programme for ICT-based safety. The greening of the transport system will result in lighter road vehicles, which will emphasize the requirement for ICT-based safety functions to prevent vehicles from crashing. User awareness has to be raised on the benefits on ICT-based safety functions.