The Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI) is organising a Sympsium titled: “Implementing evidence-based road safety measures, removing barriers and enhancing public support“, which will be held online, on 14 October 2021. The Symposium will consist of three presentations on vulnerable road users, speed and road safety management. Practitioners and decision makers who have been successful in implementing effective but sometimes controversial road safety measures will share their experience.  The symposium is a prelude to a physical conference on the same topic that will held in the autumn of 2022.  

The network of thematic experts Vip4Ride is organising the 2nd International Conference which will be held in Alexandroupolis, Greece, on 14-15 October. The Conference will be held under the theme: “Intermodal Transports: Innovations in Planning, Management, Business Development & Decision Making” and it will focus on the main economic advantages of developing intermodal transport, energy and tourism sectors.Special attention is given to decision making for investments and project financing in large infrastructures to promote intermodal options. Abstract submissions deadline: 16 July 2021 

The  Australasian College of Road Safety (ACRS) has recently published the Journal of Road Safety, May 2021 Edition. The JRS accepts papers from all countries and regions around the world and publishes a diverse range of high-quality papers on road safety from researchers, policy makers, program implementers and other road safety experts, providing anyone interested in road safety with a rich source of current knowledge, evidence, developments and best practice in road safety implementation. 

Τhe European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) is organising the LEARN! Manual Webinar, which will be held online, on 23 June 2021. The LEARN! Manual is a handbook for developing and evaluating activities and programmes for traffic safety and mobility education. It sets out recommendations, criteria and guidance to develop and implement sound educational activities in an accessible way. This webinar will present the LEARN! Manual, and show how its different steps can be applied in practice through examples from across Europe.  Registrations are open

A paper titled “To cross or not to cross? Review and meta-analysis of pedestrian gap acceptance decisions at midblock street crossings” authored by Athanasios Theofilatos,  Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Oscar Oviedo-Trespaliacios and Andrew Timmis was recently published by the Journal of Transport & Health. The paper explores pedestrian gap acceptance decisions in urban midblock locations. Fixed effects and random-effects meta-analyses are used to investigate the overall effect of critical variables. Results indicate that a unit increase in vehicle speed decreases pedestrians’ odds of crossing by 10%, while a unit increase in temporal gap size increases the odds of crossing by 7.2 times. Each crossing attempt increases the odds of crossing more than 16 times. 

EFTHITA Rhodes participated  in the Sixth UN Global Road Safety Week with several actions for speed limits of 30km/h in urban areas. Cyclists’ teams joined the cause and posters for road safety were distributed with the messages #StreetsforLife and #Love30, to raise awareness on how low-speed streets can save lives. 

The first meeting of the Road Safety Governmental Committee was held on 9 June 2021 at the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. The Road Safety Governmental Committee holds the administrative accountability of planning, implementing and supervising the National Road Safety Action Plan. In the meeting, there was a presentation of data regarding the basic pillars of the Action Plan, as well as an evaluation of the actions taken towards the Plan’s implementation. Participants in the committee were: the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Yannis Kefalogiannis as chairman, the Deputy Minister of Citizen Protection Eleftherios Oikonomou as vice-chairman,  the Alternate Minister of Interior Stelios Petsas, the Alternate Minister of Health Vasilis Kontozamanis, the Deputy Minister of Education and Religious Affairs Zeta Makri and the Deputy Minister of Digital Governance Georgios Georgantas. 

The Civil Engineering School of the National Technical University of Athens was ranked 4th globally (2nd in Europe) according to ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) 2021, being the best performance of any Higher Education School in Greece.  The GRAS use a range of objective academic indicators and third-party data to measure the performance of world universities in respective subjects, including research output, research influence, international collaboration, research quality, and international academic awards.  NTUA road safety activities have contributed to this ranking.  

A paper titled “Correlations of multiple rider behaviors with self-reported attitudes, perspectives on traffic rule strictness and social desirability“, authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Dimitris Nikolaou and George Yannis is  published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. Numerous statistical relationships were discovered and quantified correlating the four examined unsafe rider behaviors with eight latent unobserved variables. All covariances between unsafe behaviors were found to be positive and statistically significant, indicating that a rider who will engage more frequently in every single one of the four examined unsafe riding behaviors is more likely to also engage in all the others as well. 

The RADAR project team organised with great success the 5th Road Safety Expert Group (RSEG) Meeting, which was held online, on 27 May 2021, under the theme: “Transport Safety and COVID-19“. There is a reasonable threat that investments in road infrastructure safety will be largely affected by the covid-19 and will shrink already small budgets dedicated to road infrastructure safety. Improving road infrastructure safety in the Danube area in this critical time requires action to demonstrate by facts the real impact of the pandemic outbreak on road safety.  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  COVID-19 impact on mobility and safety

SAFER Vehicle, the Université Gustave Eiffel and the University of New South Wales are co-organising the 8th International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention (DDI2022), which will be held in Gothenburg, on 19-20 October 2022. DDI2022 is the primary international event on this topic, attracting delegates from more than 20 countries. It is designed to bring participants – from academia, industry and government – up-to-date on the developments and trends in the field of inattention and distraction in driving. 

Lund University and The Swedish Cycling Research Centre at VTI are co-organising the ICSC2021 under the theme “Safe cycling as an integral part of the future mobility system: planning and designing for a safe interaction between road users“, which will be held online, on 10-12 November 2021. The Conference will take place on the virtual networking platform in which efficient social interactions are made possible and it will have a special session under the theme “Cycling in pandemic time”. Abstracts submission deadline: 18 June 2021 

The European Commission officially relaunched its European Road Safety Charter, the largest platform on road safety in civil society, to support the Vision Zero ambition of reducing road deaths to almost zero by 2050. The Charter was founded in 2004 by the Road Safety Unit of  DG Move as part of its Road Safety Action Programme. To create more awareness and to have a bigger presence at the local and national level, DG MOVE will work intensively with a network of National Relays in the 27 EU Member States. 

The FIA Foundation recently published the “These are our streets: 2030 Manifesto” to coincide with the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety. The Manifesto calls for a transformation of urban streets by 2030 into safe, low speed and accessible space that puts people first, encouraging zero carbon walking and cycling, by deploying the “Speed Vaccine“: safe footpaths and crossings, protected cycleways and maximum 30 km/h speed limits anywhere children and traffic mix. The Manifesto also calls for a first ever Global Summit for Adolescents to galvanise political action and funding for a range of issues affecting Generation Z. 

The International Transport Forum (ITF) together with the Swedish Transport Administration, VTI, the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM), and the motorcycle manufacturers associations (IMMA and ACEM) are co-organising the “Motorcyclists Safety Workshop: Riding in a Safe System” which will be held online on 9-23 June. It is a follow-up to the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety and will focus on the nine recommendations of the Academic Expert Group and their application to motorcyclists’ safety.  Registration is open 

The  World Health Organisation – Regional Office for Europe (WHO-Europe) recently published a Report titled: “Supporting healthy urban transport and mobility in the context of COVID-19“. The recommendations in this guidance can help in achieving multiple societal objectives, including: transport safety and efficiency; improved quality of urban life; reduced emission of air pollutants and greenhouse gases, and reduced noise; and greater opportunities to adopt a physically active lifestyle, while supporting economic recovery.  

Elsevier has  published the International Encyclopedia of Transportation on May 2021.  Containing almost 600 articles, the Encyclopedia brings a cross-cutting and integrated approach to all aspects of transportation from a variety of interdisciplinary fields including engineering, operations research, economics, geography and sociology in order to understand the changes taking place. Emphasising the interaction between these different aspects of research, it offers new solutions to modern-day problems related to transportation. NTUA actively contributed with the following paper: Traffic Flow Volume and Safety  

Professor Dinesh Mohan passed away on 21 May 2021. Mohan was one of the world’s leading experts on traffic safety issues and human tolerance to injury. His work has significantly advanced motorcycle helmet design, pedestrian and bicyclist safety and child restraint regulations, and helped develop safer ways for various modes of transportation to safely share the roadways. During his distinguished career he was the recipient of many honours and awards, including the 1991 International Association for Accident & Traffic Medicine’s International Award and Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Traffic Medicine.

RSI P.Mylonas together with the Cyprus Automobile Association (CAA) and within the framework of the Sixth UN Global Road Safety Week, organised with great success a series of Actions and Events under the theme “Roads for Life“, which took place on 17-23 May.  The aim of the campaign was to inform and to contribute to the pledge of the UN Global Road Safety Week, through the presentation of four informational videos and the promotion of an online petition on a legislation for speed limits of 30km/h in urban areas, endorsed also by NTUA.  

NTUA participated actively in the Sixth UN Global Road Safety Week  by organising a key Scientific Workshop titled “Innovation in Road Safety Research” held online on 20 May 2021  , contributing at the Together for Safer Roads Vision Zero Fleet Forum  and several other workshops and endorsing the pledge of the UN Global Road Safety Week for speed limits of 30km/h in urban areas, together with the United Nations, World Health Organisation, International Road Federation, World Bank GRSF, ETSC/FEVR, RSI P.Mylonas, EFTHITA, Interamerican.