Traffic Safety Fund

Traffic safety fund is promoting new traffic safety products from latest R&D to speed up its deployment to avoid accidents of vehicles and pedestrian and save lives. At present time TSF is focusing on railroad crossing protection using newly developed safety equipment, so called "Advanced signaling" (see video or presentation). The choice of this equipment is done mainly because tests proved, that 100 % accidents of vehicles and pedestrians on railroad crossing can be avoided by installation of "Advanced signaling" for cars and railroad crossing gates for pedestrians. Such result no other equipment achieved. The other reason for selection of "Advanced signaling" is that it is inexpensive. As example, for one underpass or elevated crossing about 50 "Advanced signaling" can be built. Furthermore fast installation and dismantling are as well important. It takes only 1 day to put it in service against underpass building is taking years. TSF see it´s mission in speeding up "Advanced signaling" deployment by informing railroad institution and ministry about possibility to totally avoid accidents on railroad crossing by using it. But the "Advanced signaling", in spite of that it can 100 % avoid accidents on railroad crossing, has also limitations. It cannot avoid slowing down traffic on railroad crossings, vehicles must wait till train passes. So there, where is heavy traffic either on the road or rail, ideal solution is the underpass or elevated crossing where vehicles passes without delay. The disadvantage of the long time the underpass takes to build, can be solved by "Advanced signaling" which can be installed right away and serve till the underpass is finished. Then it is in one day dismantled and next day it can serve on another dangerous railroad crossings to save lives there. So, "Advanced signaling" is not competing with underpasses , but is complementing it. There are many railroad crossings which needs speed up the traffic by underpasses. On the other hand underpasses cannot be built on every of thousands railroad crossing for economic reasons. For that they are too expensive. So there is enough opportunities also for "Advanced signaling" especially on dangerous crossing where there is not too heavy traffic. Another type of safety equipment is placed directly on railroad crossing. By safety equipment placed directly on railroad crossing the statistic shows that there is no less accidents after they were installed, although that more and more sophisticated equipment is used. That is because safety equipment installed directly on railroad crossing handless dangerous situations when they happen, unfortunately there are drivers who try to "beat" the signaling to save a minute and drive on crossing on red. "Advanced signaling" is stopping vehicles already ahead of railroad crossing when it signals, so the cars do not come on the crossing and therefore there is 100% guaranty that accidents cannot happen. It is clear, that both of this safety equipment are needed and they complement each other. The last it has to be solved is financing by road or rail institutions in order to get "Advanced signaling" deployed in large scale. "Advanced signaling" deployment is placed outside of the rail safety corridor but serves for rail. So railroad institutions cannot use funds allocated for railroad crossing safety. On the other hand the road institutions, which are responsible for territory where the "Advanced signaling" is placed, have no funds for railroad crossing safety. It can be solved either by ministry or by agreement between rail and road institutions. And in order to solve also this TSF organizes the presentation at Velký Medér so institutions can solve it on the spot and give green lights to the "Advanced signaling" globally and thus save tens of thousands of lives. TSF is cooperating with state institutions securing rail crossings and is planning installations of "Advanced signaling" on hand of their recommendations on most dangerous crossings. In the meantime, the state institutions in parallel are improving safety of crossings by installing the most advanced safety equipment directly on the crossings.