Bridging the Safety Gap: A C-ITS Solution for Protecting Vulnerable Road Users

The evolution of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems represents a significant step to improve road safety by providing greater protection to road users through real-time communication between vehicles, infrastructure, and other actors. However, Vulnerable Road Users such as cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians are involved in the majority of road traffic casualties. Indeed, despite an overall decrease in road accidents up to year 2024, the number of casualties involving VRUs has not shown any significant decline, instead registering a steady number of accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians. In this paper, we propose a C-ITS Platform for the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Road Users based on Roadside Intelligent Mobility Services and DSRC/C-V2X Communication; through the combined use of camera-equipped RoadSide Units (RSUs), vehicle On-Board Units (OBUs) and tailored devices in possession of vulnerable users (so called Virtual-OBU), our solution named SALVM can detect imminently dangerous situations and send real-time notifications to all stakeholders. The solution has been tested in a co-simulation environment by employing the Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) approach.