20–21 October 2026
Zagreb, Croatia
The course is organized in connection to the 38th ICTCT conference.
About
When?
20–21 October 2026
Registration deadline: 1 October 2026
The number of seats is limited to 20, ‘first come first served’ applies.
Where?
Zagreb, Croatia
Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb
Address: Ulica Lavoslava Vukelica 4, 10 000 Zagreb (Google Maps link)
The seminar room will be announced later.
Course language
The course is given in English.
Social media
Please, use the hashtags #ictct and #ictct2026zagreb in your posts related to the course.
Syllabus
Motivation
The road accident phenomenon is complex and so are road safety management systems. As a consequence, road safety research is multi-disciplinary and covers such areas as epidemiology, statistics, in-depth accident analyses, biomechanics, behavioural studies, sociology, economics, etc. Researchers new in the field of road safety are usually limited to a specific field of investigation in which they work in-depth without getting the broader picture of what is being done in road safety research and how the different investigation fields complement each other.
The mission with the course is to give the participant a coherent view into traditional and modern traffic safety theory, methods and solutions and to have a clear understanding of the importance of the institutional framework in order to be able to make a difference in the traffic safety work subsequently. It is hoped that at the end of the course, participants will be able to situate their own work within a broader framework, and will find it easier to communicate with researchers from other disciplines.
Course objectives
- Provide researchers with an overview of theories and concepts in road safety and the associated research approaches and methods, in line with ICTCT goals and fundamentals
- Discuss key issues in road safety research
- Provide in-depth knowledge of research approaches and findings on some selected topics and their implications for other fields of road safety
- Provide an opportunity for exchange of experience between researchers from different disciplines and different parts of the world
Target audience
The course is designed for road safety researchers from all disciplines, in all sectors (transportation, public health, urban planning, education, law, etc.) and from all countries.
Study credits
Formally, ICTCT is not an academic institution to issue study credits (even though most of the course teachers are indeed university lecturers). However, PhD students are encouraged to inquire at their home universities whether they may get credits for the course participation (corresponding 1.5 ECTS credits). For any questions related to the course contents, the supervisors are welcome to contact the course organizers.
Teachers
The course faculty consists of senior researchers and university professors with an extensive experience in road safety.
Attila Borsos
University of Gyor
Hungary
Attila Borsos received his master’s degree in Economics from the University of Gyor, Hungary, and in Civil Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He gained his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Gyor, where he is full professor and head of department in the Department of Transport Infrastructure and Water Resources Engineering since 2012. He was a Visiting Scholar at Florida Atlantic University in 2013 and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Connecticut in 2010. He is a member of the PIARC World Road Association Technical Committee 3.1 Road Safety. His main research interest is road safety, more specifically accident prediction models, traffic safety trends, surrogate measures of safety, and the effect of Autonomous Vehicles on safe road design.
Stijn Daniels
Transport & Mobility Leuven
KU Leuven
Belgium
His primary research interest is road safety: causes and mechanisms associated with road crashes and near-crash events, effects of road design on crash occurrence, safety issues for vulnerable road users, effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis and economic valuation.
Marija Ferko
University of Zagreb
Croatia
Marija Ferko is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She obtained her doctorate in December 2025, graduating summa cum laude through a cotutelle programme between the University of Zagreb and Hasselt University, earning doctoral degrees from both institutions, including a Doctor of Engineering Technology from Hasselt University. Her research focuses on road safety, particularly vulnerable road users, infrastructure safety and road user behaviour. She contributes to research and professional projects examining the quality and safety effects of road markings and traffic signs, using driving simulators, eye-tracking, statistical and spatial analyses. She received the University of Zagreb Rector’s Award and the Faculty’s Dean’s Recognition Award.
Anja Katharina Huemer
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Germany
Anja Katharina Huemer is a professor for traffic psychology at Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany. She received her PhD on the measurement of driver distraction in 2012 from Technische Universität Braunschweig. Her main research interests are the safety and comfort of vulnerable road users and promoting sustainable mobility by system design.
Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University
Sweden
Aliaksei Laureshyn is an associate professor in traffic safety at Lund University, Sweden. His core competence is within theory and practical application of proactive (non-accident based) methods in safety analysis. Other research interests cover emerging technologies for data collection in traffic, safety of vulnerable road users, and policy and practice within traffic safety management, both in mature contexts, and in low- and middle-income countries.
Aliaksei is a passionate educator about the Safe System approach to traffic safety, giving lectures and full-scale courses on this subject at different arenas and in different countries incl. Sweden, China, India, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, the United States, etc.
Since 2021, Aliaksei acts as the editor-in-chief of the Traffic Safety Research journal (2004-3082). In this role, he promotes the values of the research being relevant, and scientific communication effective and understandable.
Ralf Risser
Palacky University in Olomouc
Czech Republic
Ralf Risser is an Austrian traffic psychologist. His main areas of professional interest are psychological aspects of mobility, sustainability and active traffic modes. At this time Visiting professor at Palacky University in Olomouc, Department of Psychology, Ralf Risser is a member of International Cooperation on Theories and Concepts in Traffic Safety (former ICTCT President, now Honorary member) and TPI (Traffic Psychology International).
Programme
20 October 2026
Road safety problems and collection of data
9:00–9:15
‘Introduction: course & faculty & participants’
9:15–10:00
‘Shaping traffic safety policies: a role game’
Anja Katharina Huemer
The purpose of the role game is to provide practical insights into the complexity of the decision-making process within traffic safety domain. The game serves also as an icebreaker to facilitate more informal communication among the course participants and with the teachers.
10:00–10:15
Coffee break
10:15–11:30
‘Safe System approach in traffic safety’
Stijn Daniels
In this session we will introduce the principles of a Safe System approach to road safety. Such an approach looks at safety as an integral part of the wider road traffic system. We will discuss in the group to what extent this approach differs from other approaches and what consequences this could have on current road safety policies.
11:30–12:30
Lunch
12:30–13:45
‘How to measure road traffic safety?’
Attila Borsos
13:45–15:00
‘Surrogate measures of safety and behavioral observation studies’
Aliaksei Laureshyn
Quite often, researchers cannot rely on historical accident counts due to their scarcity, poor quality (due to under-reporting or errors in coding) or simply due to absence of any history (in case of newly built sites). In such situations, alternative methods for measuring safety performance are called for. In this lecture we will discuss how traffic conflict and behavioural observations can be used as a complement—or a supplement—for accident data. A significant part of the lecture will be devoted to watching and discussing the actual traffic videos, what safety relevant information could be extracted from them and how it should be interpreted and generalized.
15:00–15:30
Coffee break
15:30–16:45
‘Road safety research at FTTS—insight into national and international projects’
Marija Ferko
The lecture provides an overview of the road safety research conducted by the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb. It focuses on national and international road safety projects, illustrating how the faculty’s applied research feeds into real-world safety measures.
16:45
End of day 1
21 October 2026
Road user behavior and traffic safety measures
9:00–9:15
Mid-course recap
9:15–10:30
‘Traffic psychology: a holistic perspective’
Ralf Risser
This lecture is an introduction to the human factors part of the course. We will discuss the role of road users in the traffic system in a holistic way and try to find the answer to the question ‘Why do people act in traffic the way they do?‘. Not least, questions dealing with human behavior, sustainability, and mobility will be tackled.
10:30–10:45
Coffee break
10:45–12:00
‘Motivation and behavior of road users’
Anja Katharina Huemer
In this lecture, we will talk about the fundamentals of behavior in road traffic. Perception, motivation, and activation regulation models will be presented to explain choices, performance, and unsafe behaviors in traffic.
12:00–13:00
Lunch
13:00–14:00
‘Accounting for human factors in road system design’
Attila Borsos
An interactive lecture on the relationship between human factors and road design. The lecture will touch upon various human factors (e.g. workload, perception, recognition), safe system approaches (Swedish Vision Zero, Swiss Cheese model), as well as theories on driving task, task performance and information processing.
14:00–15:00
‘Driving simulators as a road safety research tool’
Marija Ferko
The lecture provides an introduction to driving simulators as a research tool — how controlled, repeatable scenarios are used to study driver behavior and evaluate safety interventions before they reach the road.
15:00–15:15
Coffee break
15:15–16:15
‘Presentation skills for making impact’
Aliaksei Laureshyn
Majority of scientific presentations are utterly dull, sending the audience directly to sleep. The results that took months to produce go unnoticed, the important messages never reach to the right people. Sounds wrong, right?
In this talk we will cover the absolute fundamentals of making an engaging presentation. Who is your audience and how your research is relevant for them? What is the key message you want them to remember? How to deliver it so that people want to ask you for more details and read your full paper?
And, no, it is not about PowerPoint fancy functions.
16:15
Evaluation & closing
