Advances in transportation studies. Special issue 2011

This Special Issue is dedicated to 16 selected papers presented at the Road Safety and Simulation Conference that has been hosted by the Purdue University in Indianapolis in September 2011. We publish here blind peer reviewed papers on different topics all related to road safety, human factors, driving simulation, advanced technologies. I find this work is a remarkable compendium of the most updated approaches, methods, instruments and cultures, giving a good overview of the current and novel research in this field. It is a great pleasure and it is an unusual honour for me to serve as Special Editor in this important occurrence. I take this opportunity with enthusiasm to acknowledge that I am very proud having co-founded the Conference for the first edition in Rome in 2007. My first thought is for who, with me and a little circle of friends, for first did imagine RSS Conference: my father professor Carlo Benedetto. When we planned to organize RSS we were at the MIT in Boston with some researchers involved in driving simulation studies. It was the 2006. I would have never thought to arrive at this point. At the early beginning we programmed one Conference and we had not presumed that it would be a first Conference.