32. How can we use innovation and technology (including new behavioural and social insights) to shape transport systems to a) improve personal safety and b) make a material impact in reducing fatalities and serious injuries on all modes of transport?

Background

DfT’s ARI identifies 40 broad research questions that reflect areas of strategic importance to the department, where further insight and collaboration could enhance our evidence base, challenge assumptions and strengthen future decision-making. The ARI is organised around four complementary themes, and this question sits within the Cross-cutting Systems, Enablers and Uncertainty theme.

Delivering outcomes across growth and place, journeys for people, and green and healthy transport depends not only on what interventions are pursued, but on how the transport system behaves, adapts and changes under real world constraints.
The questions in this theme focus on system level dynamics that underpin all outcomes, particularly how risks, costs and change are managed in complex and uncertain contexts, including governance and public trust. Together, they reflect the reality that uncertainty is an enduring feature of the transport system, and that understanding these system level factors is essential to achieving progress across all strategic outcomes.

Within this theme, the questions are organised into four sections that reflect different system level dimensions — decision making under uncertainty, system resilience and risk, how change happens in practice, and the role of innovation, data and finance.

Section 1: How are transport decisions really made under uncertainty and competing objectives? This theme brings together questions that cut across all strategic outcomes, focusing on how the transport system behaves, adapts and changes under real world constraints.
Section 2: How resilient is the transport system to shocks, stress, risk and failure? This section focuses on the transport system’s ability to operate safely, securely and affordably under increasing pressure, risk and uncertainty.
Section 3: What drives change in the transport system in practice? This section focuses on the people, institutions and system capabilities that determine whether evidence, policy and innovation translate into real world change.
Section 4: How do innovation, data, finance and new technologies reshape the transport system, and with what consequences? This section examines how innovation, data, finance and new technologies influence system behaviour, risk and outcomes over time.

Next steps

If you have research relevant to this topic, are planning work in this area, or would like to discuss potential collaboration, please get in touch. For our monitoring and evaluation purposes, we are also keen to hear if the ARI has informed or influenced your research.

To get in touch and report the use, please fill in the form https://submit.forms.service.gov.uk/form/264718/dft-areas-of-research-interest-ari/

Link to DfT ARI: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dft-areas-of-research-interest/areas-of-research-interest-2026

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