ProtAct-Us Brings Road Safety Expertise to IRCOBI Europe 2026 in Munich

From 9 to 11 September, the ProtAct-Us project joined leading researchers, engineers and safety experts from around the world at the IRCOBI Europe 2026 Conference, one of the most respected international gatherings dedicated to injury biomechanics and road safety. The event, hosted in Munich, brought together the scientific community to discuss the latest advances in understanding and preventing road traffic injuries.

A Workshop Ahead of the Main Event

Before the conference officially opened, the ProtAct-Us team took part in the IRCOBI Pre-Conference Workshop, held on 8 September at LMU Munich, in partnership with IMPROVA Road Safety. Titled “Long-term consequences of road traffic-related injury,” the workshop tackled a question that is often overlooked in road safety research: what happens to victims long after the crash itself.

Discussions centred on how researchers can more effectively measure and assess the lasting impact of traffic injuries, from the practicalities of data collection and harmonisation across studies to the growing role of Human Body Models (HBMs) in simulating and predicting injury outcomes. For a project like ProtAct-Us, which is focused on advancing protective measures and injury prevention, the exchange offered valuable perspectives on how long-term consequences can be better integrated into safety assessments going forward.

Spotlight on Injury Risk Research

Among the contributions presented during the conference days was a talk by Christoph Klein, titled “Development of an injury risk function for a HBM with a specific fracture in the lower extremities.” The presentation examined how injury risk functions can be refined for Human Body Models to better capture specific types of lower-extremity fractures — research that feeds directly into the kind of biomechanical evidence base that projects like ProtAct-Us rely on to design more effective protective solutions.

Beatriz Juanes represented the ProtAct-Us project at the conference, presenting “Experimental Assessment of Head Injury Mechanisms in Urban Falls of Vulnerable Road Users,” a study analysing, through experimental testing, how head injuries occur and behave in urban falls involving vulnerable road users. The presentation added the project’s own experimental evidence to the wider body of research being discussed at IRCOBI.

Building Connections for Safer Mobility

Beyond the formal sessions, IRCOBI Europe 2026 gave the ProtAct-Us team the chance to engage directly with peers working across the injury biomechanics field, comparing methods, sharing early findings and identifying opportunities for future collaboration. Events of this kind remain an important channel for EU-funded road safety projects to stay connected to the wider research community and to ensure that their work is grounded in the latest scientific evidence.

The ProtAct-Us project will continue to share updates on its participation in international conferences and on the progress of its research into road traffic injury prevention.