Winners announced for the 2025 Excellence in Road Safety Awards

The Excellence in Road Safety Awards 2025 took place on Thursday 16 October, in Brussels and online. The event, organised by the European Road Safety Charter, brought together leading voices from government, industry and civil society to honour the most impactful road safety initiatives. 

The Awards celebrate progress toward the EU’s Vision Zero target - halving road deaths and serious injuries by 2030 and eliminating them entirely by 2050. This year’s categories reflected the breadth of road safety challenges, covering urban safety, technology, education, older people’s mobility, and driving under the influence and distraction.

Together, the winning projects showcased a wide range of approaches to making Europe’s roads and streets safer, from local community efforts to large-scale collaboration.

The 2025 Winners 

• Urban: Métropole de Lyon (France) received the award for its project Safer surroundings for secondary schools - a city-wide initiative redesigning streets around 120 secondary schools with safer crossings, pavements, and traffic calming. With 13,000 students engaged, it’s creating safer, more inclusive public spaces for young people.
• Driving Under the Influence and Distraction: The Road Safety Authority Ireland and Fline (Ireland & Belgium) were recognised for FlineBox: For safer driving decisions, an easy-to-use breathalyser terminal that helps people check their alcohol levels before driving. Installed in over 250 locations, it has already delivered more than one million preventative tests, convincing thousands not to drive when over the limit.
• Education: Volvo Car España won this category for its LEGO robotics programme, where children design accident-preventing vehicles and create safe, inclusive mobility concepts. Reaching 2,100 students annually, it builds technical skills and lifelong road safety awareness.
• Older People: This award went to Madlencnik Mobility – Easy Drivers Radfahrschule (Austria) for its e-bike training scheme tailored to older adults. The initiative combines practical riding skills with a unique “train the trainer” model. Senior participants now teach children, spreading safe mobility habits across generations.
• Technology: In this category, Valerann, together with Transport Infrastructure Ireland and Roughan & O’Donovan, won for Lanternn: AI & data fusion for road safety. The AI-powered platform fuses real-time traffic, weather, and sensor data to detect incidents faster and boost operator response. Piloted in Ireland, it sets new standards for smart, proactive road safety management.

The People’s Choice Award went to The NTUA Road Safety Observatory (Greece) for 30 Marathons for 30km/h, voted live by participants during the ceremony as the most inspiring initiative.

Further details on this year’s winners, finalist projects, and best practice examples can be found on the European Road Safety Charter website.

Author: Dearbhla Mullin

Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the European Commission.