Livewire Digital joins global SafeRoute-6G consortium to accelerate Europe’s vision-zero roads

Livewire Digital announced its pivotal role in CELTIC-NEXT’s SafeRoute-6G project, a pan-European R&D program that aims to use internet-connected road infrastructure with multiple sensors to cut traffic deaths in half by 2030, in line with European Commission targets. With the advent of autonomous vehicles on UK and European roads, “intelligent roads” will be crucial to safety and the removal of risk, enabling traffic flow to be informed through the use of myriad data sources, from hazard avoidance and weather to congestion management.

In 2023, 20,400 people lost their lives in road crashes across the EU, marking a 1% decrease from the previous year, with 46 road deaths per million inhabitants. While the long-term trend shows a 10% reduction compared to 2019, the current pace of decline falls short of the required 4.5% annual reduction needed to achieve the EU's goal of halving road deaths by 2030.

Under the three-year €9.3 million SafeRoute-6G project, Livewire Digital will supply RazorLink® Hybrid Connectivity Software, uniting cellular, satellite and short-range V2X links into one resilient pipe. The technology ensures real-time, gap-free data exchange between vehicles, sensors and traffic management systems, whether on busy city streets or in remote rural corridors.

Co-ordinated by HITEC Luxembourg, the SafeRoute-6G consortium of 30 organizations will tackle four high-impact use cases:

• Crowdsourced hazard & weather intelligence from vehicle and roadside sensors
• Digital-twin threat detection to guard against cyber-attacks
• Hybrid teleoperation for remote monitoring of autonomous fleets
• Seamless cross-border exchange of cooperative ITS messages
• By project close in September 2027, the platform will demonstrate:
• 100 ms end-to-end latency for safety-critical messages
• 99.999 % service availability across mixed network types
• Scalable architecture ready for 6G and NTN (non-terrestrial networks)

Already proving its metal in the emergency response sector and maritime market, Livewire Digital’s RazorLink® provides seamless bonding of any available data network, from satellite and terrestrial cellular carriers to private or closed networks such as those supporting the emergency services. Providing full IP mobility; the combination of networks provides optimal bandwidth and resilience, encrypting data whatever route the data traffic takes.

RazorLink® accelerates TCP, improving performance over high latency satellite, poor quality cellular and intermittent Wi-Fi links. RazorLink prioritization makes it feasible for critical data to be given precedence over background updates and can deliver low latency video streams giving control center staff better situation awareness. Remote access can be realized without the complexity, overhead and poor performance of VPN based architectures.

Tristan Wood, CEO of Livewire Digital and the principal architect behind this hybrid technology, said: “SafeRoute-6G is Europe’s blueprint for a zero-fatality road network, bringing together the best of cellular, satellite and roadside technologies to create a safety net that never sleeps – and we’re proud to work alongside other innovators involved in the project.

“Within that vision, RazorLink® is the fusion engine: in mere milliseconds it bonds 5G, satellite, Wi-Fi and tomorrow’s 6G or NTN links into one ultra-reliable, self-healing channel. With continuous, gap-free telemetry and video, traffic managers can detect hazards before drivers even know they exist, cyber-threats are neutralized at inception, and autonomous vehicles stay under rock-solid control.

“Every packet RazorLink delivers brings Europe another step closer to streets where accidents are the rare exception, not the rule.”