A22, an open-air laboratory for autonomous driving

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor)- The overall accident rate on the Brenner motorway has declined by more than 30 points since 2001. In 2025 it stood at 14.54 against a national average of 26.52. Contributing to this result were huge investments in maintenance, extensive scheduling of works and the choice of high-performance materials such as draining asphalt and Corten guardrails. But in recent years the downward curve has flattened, because it has to reckon with an incompressible cause of accidents, namely the human factor to which 93% of road accidents are attributable.

In order to overcome this obstacle too, Autostrada del Brennero has for years now decided to invest decisively in digitalisation, which has in the development of the connected and cooperative driving its ultimate goal. Everything stems from the European project C-Roads Italy, which is part of the European C-Roads programme that coordinates several European countries to develop and harmonise Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), i.e. technologies that enable vehicles and infrastructures to communicate with each other.

Here is the in-depth study