KURATORIUM FUER VERKEHRSSICHERHEIT

Their core work

KfV (Austrian Road Safety Board) is Austria's leading research centre dedicated to road safety, traffic accident prevention, and mobility behaviour analysis. They study how cultural factors shape traffic safety outcomes and develop evidence-based frameworks for reducing road casualties. Their work spans traditional road safety research through to emerging challenges like driver behaviour in partially automated vehicles, making them a bridge between behavioural science and transport engineering.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

KfV's early H2020 work (2015-2018) concentrated on understanding traffic safety as a cultural phenomenon — how societal attitudes and mobility behaviours shape road safety outcomes (TraSaCu, SafetyCube). By 2019, their focus shifted toward the technological frontier: driver behaviour in the context of vehicle automation and real-time safety interventions (i-DREAMS). This evolution mirrors the broader transport safety field's pivot from purely human-factor analysis to human-machine interaction challenges.

KfV is moving from studying why accidents happen culturally toward studying how technology (especially vehicle automation) changes driver behaviour and risk — a critical gap as assisted driving systems become mainstream.

How they like to work

KfV operates primarily as a contributing partner rather than a consortium leader — they coordinated only one smaller MSCA-RISE project (TraSaCu, EUR 58,500) while participating in two larger RIA projects. With 38 unique partners across 19 countries from just three projects, they work in large, diverse European consortia. This broad network suggests they are well-connected and trusted as a specialist contributor who brings deep road safety expertise to multi-partner research initiatives.

Despite only three H2020 projects, KfV has built a remarkably wide network of 38 partners across 19 countries, reflecting their participation in large pan-European transport safety consortia. Their reach spans well beyond the DACH region into a truly European collaboration footprint.

What sets them apart

KfV brings a rare combination: they are both a national road safety authority (with access to Austrian crash data and policy channels) and an active research organisation embedded in European consortia. Unlike university transport departments, KfV's mandate is applied safety — their research feeds directly into policy and prevention campaigns. For consortium builders, they offer credibility with national transport authorities plus hands-on behavioural research capability.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SafetyCube
  Largest funding (EUR 451,750) — a major European effort to build a decision support system linking road safety measures to their costs and benefits.
• i-DREAMS
  Most recent project (2019-2023) tackling the emerging challenge of driver safety in partially automated vehicles, signalling KfV's strategic direction.
• TraSaCu
  KfV's only coordinator role — a MSCA-RISE project on traffic safety cultures, demonstrating their thought leadership in behavioural road safety research.