Reducing road fatalities represents a pressing challenge of both European and Italian road safety strategies. At the European level, initiatives such as the "Vision Zero" mission aims to halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030, with the long-term ambition of eliminating fatalities altogether. In Italy, these goals are embedded within the National Road Safety Plan 2030, which emphasizes the protection of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs, e.g., pedestrians, cyclists, moped-user) as a priority group given their disproportionate exposure to traffic risks. Their fragile role within the road transportation system, combined with hazardous driving behaviors and often inadequate urban infrastructure, highlights the need for targeted research and interventions. The present contribution aims to provide results and insights from the "ARCADE" PRIN project which is strictly focused on these issues. Adopting a multi-technique approach, this project brings together the expertise of three Research Units (RUs) in the fields of Road Engineering, Methodology and Experimental Psychology. in the fields of Road Engineering and Psychology. The objective is to identify geometrical, behavioral and psychophysiological factors contributing to conflict patterns in the daily critical driver-VRU interaction, focusing on real hazardous sites within the three RUs' cities. At each site, risk assessment and the evaluation of effective safety countermeasures are jointly investigated through a cutting-edge, multi-perspective simulative approach that explores the interactions between VRUs and drivers. Observational and behavioral analyses have shown that road design and traffic layout significantly influence crash risk and severity. Notably, dedicated cycle lanes resulted in fewer collisions compared to shared lanes. Overall, findings from driving simulation studies involving increasingly complex road interactions demonstrated that adopting specific geometric configurations as safety countermeasures—together with attention to the individual characteristics of both drivers and VRUs—promotes more functional solutions and enhances protection for the VRUs, facilitating the path towards improved road safety.