The Road Safety Trust (RST) has opened applications for its Spring large grants programme, with a total of £750,000 available for ‘innovative and high impact' safety projects.

Individual grants ranging from £50k to £200k are up for grabs to support research projects and interventions that the trust thinks will ‘make a positive impact on the safety of our roads'.

Bids are expected to focus on two themes: preventing harm linked to drug-impaired driving and motorised riding, or safer vehicles

Louise Palomino, grants and impact director at The Road Safety Trust, said: ‘These themes align with the priorities set out in the UK Government's National Road Safety Strategy, which emphasises tackling the use of drink and drugs and also highlights the role of technology, innovation and data in improving vehicle safety.

‘As per the past decade of our grant giving work, the Trust is keen to fund projects which can demonstrably prevent harm on our roads and make them safer for all users, and I look forward to seeing the proposals that are submitted for consideration.'

The trust is planning to continue with its two-stage application process that was trialled with its Autumn 2025 small grant round, which offers prospective grantees early feedback on their proposal as well as additional guidance for those invited to submit full bids.

Only UK-based organisations are able to apply, with the trust encouraging public sector bodies, professional associations, registered charities and university departments to submit bids.

The portal to submit bids is now live, with applicants having until 5 May to submit their expression of interest.

Themes

The trust stated that all projects should address a ‘clearly identified' road safety issue, consider how findings and interventions can be used in practice and support the government's 2026 road safety strategy.

For projects addressing the drug-impaired driving and riding theme, the trust is encouraging organisations to submit proposals that will ‘strengthen the evidence base' and enable people to improve practical responses to ‘preventing and tackling drug-impaired driving'.

It added that applications should focus on:

  • Improving data and intelligence on the scale and nature of drug-impaired driving and riding.
  • Understanding patterns of risk
  • Understanding and improving the advice given to patients regarding the effects of medications on driving and riding
  • The relationship between medication use, driving and riding impairment and crash risk
  • Examining the implementation and acceptability of prevention and enforcement approaches for drivers and riders intoxicated by alcohol or drugs.

For the theme of ‘Safer Vehicles', the RST is calling for proposals that will ‘help build the evidence needed to reduce risk in a changing road and vehicle environment'. It also encourages applicants to focus on:

  • The effectiveness of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), user behaviour, distraction and human-technology interface factors
  • Understanding the bypassing or disuse of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)
  • Optimising the use of in-vehicle post-crash data to facilitate emergency response
  • Using in-vehicle motorcycle data to detect and understand motorcycle risk
  • Understanding and tackling the prevalence and use of cloned and ghost plates
  • Adapting roads policing to the introduction of automated vehicles.

More information on the grants and how to apply can be found here.