Dimosthenis Pavlou has successfully defended his PhD thesis titled: Traffic and safety behaviour of drivers with neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions. This PhD thesis was carried out at the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens under the supervision of Prof. George Yannis. The objective of this inter-disciplinary PhD dissertation was the analysis of traffic and safety behaviour of drivers with neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions. More specifically, the impact of brain pathologies on reaction time, accident probability, driving errors, and driving performance was under investigation. A large-scale driving simulator experiment was carried out, comprising a medical/neurological and neuropsychological assessment of 225 drivers, and a set of driving tasks for different scenarios. An innovative statistical analysis methodology has been developed and implemented, based on Regression Models, Principal Component Analysis and Structural Equation Models.        

The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victimsis observed on the third Sunday of November each year (this year on 20 November 2016) by an increasing number of countries on every continent around the world. From 1995, the European Federation of Road Traffic Victims (FEVR)observed this day, as European Day of Remembrance, that was adopted by the UN in 2005, and is dedicated to remembering the many millions killed or injured in road crashes and their families and communities, as well as to pay tribute to the dedicated emergency crews, police and medical professionals who daily deal with the traumatic aftermath of road death and injury. 

Selected papers of the Transport Research Arena Conference which took place in Paris in 2014 are now published by ISTE/Wiley. A special volume edited by NTUA Prof. George Yannis, is dedicated to Traffic Safety, containing theoretical chapters and practical case studies addressing topics such as road safety management and policies, accident analysis and modeling, vulnerable road users’ safety, road infrastructure safety, ITS and railway safety.    

The 6th Annual European PRAISE Conference on ‘Work-related road safety’ organised by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) will take place on 19 October 2016, in Brussels. This year’s PRAISE conference will focus on grey fleet drivers (employees driving on work business with their own vehicle) and improving taxi safety. There’s still time to apply for the PRAISE awards for companies and public authorities investing in road safety.  

A workshop on ‘Regulating drink driving to protect all road users’ will take place on 18 October 2016, in Brussels. This year’s European Transport Safety Lecture will be given by Prof Richard Allsop, Emeritus Professor of Transport Studies, University College London and will be followed by a panel debate. The event is part of the SMART project on drink driving. 

A four page brochure titled ‘How 3-star or better roads can cut death and trauma’ is now available by EuroRAP aiming to support its members and road safety professionals across the continent in their meetings with key policy makers. The brochure provides key statistics and cost-benefit analyses to make the economic case for improving road infrastructure in order to help reduce deaths on Europe’s roads by 2020 to less than 50% of their 2010 total of 31,500. It features case studies and national 3-star policy targets and sets out recommended policy goals. 

The Sixth International Conference on Traffic and Transport Psychology (ICTTP2016), organised by QUT’s Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q)and Griffith University’s Menzies Health Institute Queenslandtook place in Brisbane, Australia, on 2-5 August 2016. It was the first time an ICTTP has been held in the Southern Hemisphere and only the second time outside of Europe. The Conference was a global forum, with a theme of “UN Decade of Action For Road Safety: The Half-way Point”, at which nearly 400 road safety experts from 39 countries attended, including researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and industry from the areas of public health, law, medicine, economics, law enforcement, public policy, education, human factors, and psychology met, presented and discussed on the latest work being undertaken in these areas.

The  Road Safety Unit of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport has launched a campaign with TISPOL called “EDWARD –  the European Day Without A Road Death”  which is scheduled for the 21st September 2016, during the Mobility Week (16th – 22nd September 2016). The objective of the campaign is to reduce the number of road fatalities and serious road traffic injuries to the aspirational zero on that day.   For more details on the Project EDWARD, please watch this short video.        

The UN Road Safety Collaboration is organising the global campaign for the Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week, 8-14 May 2017. The Week will focus on speed and what can be done to address this key risk factor for road traffic deaths and injuries. Speed contributes to around one-third of all fatal road traffic crashes in high-income countries, and up to half in low- and middle-income countries. The Global Road Safety Week seeks to increase understanding of the dangers of speed and generate action on measures to address speed, thereby saving lives on the roads. 

Safer City Streets is a new global traffic safety network, managed by the International Transport Forum and it is built for cities to share their experience and learn from each other. Cities address many challenges by working together and learning from each other – but so far not in road safety. Safer City Streets fills this gap by linking cities that are working to make their citizens safer in traffic. It provides city officials high-value information for better decision making, global networking and learning opportunities for city officials and the possibility to carry out research on topics of common interest. Member cities have access to policy-relevant data, a network of experts and targeted analysis.  NTUA has actively contributed to the methodological approach of the Safer City Streets initiative.  

A paper titled ‘Mobile phone use, speed and accident probability of young drivers‘ authored by George Yannis, Leonidas Roumpas and Eleonora Papadimitriou is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies. A driving simulator experiment was carried out, in which young participants drove in different driving scenarios: urban and interurban areas, good or rainy weather, with or without the occurrence of unexpected incidents. Log-normal linear regression waw used to analyze the influence of mobile phone use and other parameters on the mean speed of drivers, whereas binary logistic regression was used to analyze the influence of mobile phone, change in speed and other parameters on accident probability. The results suggest that mobile phone use leads to statistically significant overall decrease of the mean speed. However, some drivers increased their speed during the mobile phone conversation, a case which has received little attention in the literature. Mobile phone use leads to significant increase of accident probability, indicating that the speed reduction when using a mobile phone is not sufficient to counterbalance the overall increased risk, especially when an unexpected incident occurs.     

The 15th International Alcohol Interlock Symposium organised by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) and Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF), will take place on 13-15 September, in Brussels. Alcohol interlock programs have expanded greatly in recent decades. Today, programs combine technological advances with more tailored and efficient monitoring strategies to deliver high-quality services. The theme of the 2016 Symposium is “Efficiency Through Automation”. As alcohol interlock technology evolves, it becomes increasingly important to understand how intelligent devices can be embedded in sophisticated vehicles and linked to database systems to make services more accessible and enhance road safety.     

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently the full version of the Annual Report 2016, which comprises a synthesis of the main trends and road safety indicators for the year 2014 and preliminary data for the year 2015. It presents longer-term trends in order to better understand the developments taking place in the different countries. While the 32 IRTAD member countries made good progress in reducing road deaths in the first half of the UN Decade of Action – the number of road fatalities fell by 8.8% between 2010 and 2014 – this positive trend faltered in 2015 when the number of road deaths increased in at least 19 countries, while only nine countries managed to reduce or stabilise their road death toll in 2015.  Detailed validated reports for each country are illustrated in the full version of the IRTAD Annual Report. NTUA has contributed to the detailed report for Greece.       

The World Conference on Transport Research organised by the WCTRS and the Tongji University took place on 10-15 of July 2016, at Shanghai, China. The programme included more than 1.170 papers presented in oral and poster sessions. The authors from 65 countries ensured WCTR 2016 as a truly international event. The WCTRS Young Researchers’ Conference took place on 10 July 2016. The aims of the conference were to offer a unique opportunity to bring together experts in all aspects of transport research, from all parts of the world and to stimulate the exchange of ideas in the broad field of transport research.  The Conference Key Findings are now available.  NTUA presentations concerned: Human factors of pedestrian walking and crossing behavior

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Investigation of declared and revealed driver behaviour using vehicle diagnostics‘ was presented by Natalia Vittoratou in July 2016. The aim of this diploma thesis is the correlation of stated and revealed driver’s behavior with the use of vehicle on-board diagnostics (OBD) data. On that purpose, a large data set from a driving behavior experiment was exploited, which recorded abnormal behavior of 17 drivers. These data concerned harsh acceleration and braking, average traffic speed and mileage travelled, which were recorded per second during a period of three months. Drivers’ stated behavior was investigated through a corresponding questionnaire. For the data analysis, a mathematical statistical model was developed using linear regression. The results demonstrated a strong correlation between harsh brakings and accelerations on one hand and the number of accidents, the annual income and the declared frequency of harsh braking on the other.     vittoratou-ad60