The Road Safety Trust announces over £1.1 million in new grant funding to tackle inequalities in road safety

The Road Safety Trust, the UK’s largest independent road safety funder, has today announced the award of over £1.1 million in grant funding for six new projects focused on addressing inequalities in road safety.

These projects were selected following the Trust’s Autumn 2024 funding round, which invited applications for research and practical interventions that explore and address how different communities and individuals experience unequal risks on UK roads.

Following an extremely rigorous review by the Road Safety Initiatives Committee (RSIC) and the Board of Trustees, six projects have been approved for funding. All six are ‘Large Grants’.

The projects cover a diverse range of topics and will be delivered by a mix of academic institutions and community organisations. The successful projects are:

• RAC Foundation (in collaboration with Agilysis) – Understanding Vehicle Safety Inequalities in Great Britain

• Nottingham Trent University (in collaboration with Surewise insurers) – Motorised Mobility Devices: Incidents, Near Misses and Safety

• Nottingham Trent University (in collaboration with the Farm Safety Foundation, National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs and Esitu) – Tractor Driver Training: Creating a Hazard Perception VR Course for Agricultural Colleges

• University of Leeds (in collaboration with Leeds City Council, the National Autism Society and others) – Autistic Children Matter: Addressing Road Crossing Challenges from Multiple Perspectives

• University of Leeds (in collaboration with Leeds City Council and West Yorkshire Combined Authority) – e-SAFE: Equity, Social Determinants, Anti-social Behaviour and Future E-Mobility

• University of Oxford (in collaboration with Swindon SEND Families Voice, Living Streets, and the Council for Disabled Children) – Safe-SEND: Mapping Road Safety Challenges to Independent Mobility for Children with SEND

Ruth Purdie, CEO of The Road Safety Trust, said:

“These new grants reflect our growing understanding that road danger is not experienced by all members of society equally. By funding projects that tackle inequalities our intention is to shape a safer, fairer system for everyone.”

The next funding round will take place in late 2025/early 2026. Further details will be shared later this year.

Full details of each project are shown below. If you are interesting in learning more about a specific project, please email media@roadsafetytrust.org.uk.

Notes to editors

A full description of each project is provided as follows:

RAC Foundation (in collaboration with Agilysis) – Understanding Vehicle Safety Inequalities in Great Britain

Amount: £110,000

This project seeks to explore the links between deprivation and vehicle technologies. Through matching multiple datasets the project will carry out a complete analysis of vehicle safety technologies fitted to a large sample of cars involved in recorded collisions between 2022-2024. The dataset, together with neighbourhood characteristics will be reviewed and a report produced analysing and understanding the links between vehicle safety features and deprivation. The data processes used to carry out the analysis will be published as open-source data to allow repeated use of the innovation, and the datasets will be available to transport researchers. Finally, the project will deliver a consumer guide on vehicle technology safety specifically aimed at supporting buying decisions for used vehicles.

Nottingham Trent University (in collaboration with Surewise insurers) – Motorised Mobility Devices: Incidents, Near Misses and Safety

Amount: £207,923

This project aims to improve safety for users of MMDs (motorised mobility devices including mobility scooters and power chairs). It aims to significantly expand the information we have by developing a comprehensive framework through which to understand MMD safety, involving analysis of incident and ‘near miss’ data, and bring this together with existing work on the hazards MMD users face at road crossings. It will also develop an app for MMD users to log ‘near miss’ situations and their characteristics over 12-18 months, and it will advise app users about MMD safety information in real time when they log a ‘near miss’. It’s hoped the project will reduce incidents and enhance MMD safety by creating new safety guidance to be disseminated to users and throughout the industry, and by providing new data and knowledge that will underpin future MMD safety initiatives.

Nottingham Trent University (in collaboration with the Farm Safety Foundation, National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs and Esitu) – Tractor Driver Training: Creating a Hazard Perception VR Course for Agricultural Colleges

Amount: £185,798

The aim of this project is to improve the higher-order driving skills of young tractor drivers, to reduce their crash risk and save lives on the road. The project will develop a course using VR hazard perception materials and verbal commentaries embedded in a two-hour training course which can be given to groups of up to 25 students, with the aim of having 200 trainees. The project will hopefully result in a course that demonstrably improves hazard perception skills and knowledge in young tractor drivers, which can then be rolled out to agricultural colleges across the UK.

University of Leeds (in collaboration with Leeds City Council, the National Autism Society and others) – Autistic Children Matter: Addressing Road Crossing Challenges from Multiple Perspectives

Amount: £282,639

The overarching aim of this project is to improve the pedestrian safety of autistic children. The project team will work with autistic children (age 11-13), caregivers, their road crossing trainers (Independent Travel Training - ITT), local SEND schools and engineers to understand the road crossing challenges faced by autistic children. The project will utilise the innovative pedestrian simulator at the University of Leeds to evaluate different designs of crossings on autistic children’s crossing behaviour and visual attention, using eye tracking. It is anticipated that the findings will inform real-world infrastructure design, education/training, and policy in the short and medium term.

University of Leeds (in collaboration with Leeds City Council and West Yorkshire Combined Authority) – e-SAFE: Equity, Social Determinants, Anti-social Behaviour and Future E-Mobility

Amount: £133,182

e-SAFE (Equity, Social determinants, Anti-social behaviour, Future E-mobility) will evaluate factors influencing road safety and e-mobility users by identifying anti-social behaviours and road safety risks and examine how these risks are distributed amongst different user groups (i.e. young adults, gig-economy workers etc). Focusing on the West Yorkshire region, the project will assess the challenge around safe e-mobility by quantifying road safety risks and identifying high activity locations. Findings will be shared widely with the sector.

University of Oxford (in collaboration with Swindon SEND Families Voice, Living Streets, and the Council for Disabled Children) – Safe-SEND: Mapping Road Safety Challenges to Independent Mobility for Children with SEND

Amount: £238,399

The ‘Safe-SEND’ project aims to promote road safety among children with SEND and support them as they transition to independent mobility. The project will achieve this through close collaboration with 50 families from Swindon and local and national stakeholders by profiling the safety challenges and dangerous scenarios encountered by children with SEND and their carers from different neighbourhoods, and create an open-access participatory mapping tool to enable families to report the nature and locations of specific risks and challenges. Safe-SEND will ultimately facilitate the co-development of tailored interventions to make the transport system safer, more inclusive, and socially just for children with SEND.

24 April 2025