The European Commission – DG Move has published a Staff Working Document titled “EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” which include details as to how it intends to put its Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety into practice. This includes a first list of key safety performance indicators (KPI), elaborated in close cooperation with Member States and the active contribution of NTUA, that will be monitored across the EU to underpin the target of 50% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. The list (including indicators like vehicle safety, seat belt wearing rate, speed compliance and post-crash care) is a living document that will be developed further over time, but first data can be gathered on this basis from next year. 
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) published the 13th edition of PIN Annual Report , with the active contribution of NTUA, presented at the 2019 PIN Conference which took place with great success on 19 June, 2019 in Brussels. During this Conference the latest road safety figures were presented and actions needed to accelerate road safety progress will be identified. Ireland was the winner of this year’s European Transport Safety Council Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) award. Ireland was the second safest European Union Member State in 2018, in terms of road mortality (road deaths per million inhabitants) and has moved up five places in the ranking of EU countries since 2010 when it held 7th place.
On 28 May, 45 experts from Europe and Australia were gathered in Gothenburg, Sweden, within the framework of the project Levitate, in order to discuss which societal impacts connected and automated vehicles will have. Levitate is building tools to help European cities, regions and national governments prepare for a future with increasing levels of automated vehicles in passenger cars, urban transport services and urban logistics. The workshop marked the first meeting of the Levitate Stakeholder Group, which meets several times until the completion of the project in 2021. The stakeholder group facilitates a continuous dialogue with experts, users and the consortium about the impacts of connected and automated transport (CAT).
The European Commission – DG Move and the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport organised the kick-off meeting of the project ‘EU Road Safety Exchange’ which took place with great success in Athens, on 10 June 2019. ‘EU Road Safety Exchange’ is a three-year twinning project (2019-2021) that supports improved institutional capacity and exchange of knowledge and best practice on road safety topics between EU Member States. At the core of the project is a series of twinning activities whereby leading EU road safety professionals exchange effective road safety strategies and policies with their counterparts from the selected Member States. The objective of this project is to reduce the overall number of road deaths and serious injuries on EU roads and help close the road safety gap between EU Member States by providing support to those with the highest potential to make significant improvements. NTUA actively contributed at the kick-off meeting with the following presentation: 
Motorcycle Safety in Greece
A new book titled ‘La sécurité routière en France – Road Safety in France‘ authored by Laurent Carnis, Catherine Gabaude and Marie-Line Gallenne, was published in May 2019. Since the 1970s, road accidents have undergone a remarkable evolution, which has led to fewer fatalities and fewer casualties on French roads. But the accidents remain too numerous and still defeat the chronicles. Greater road safety justifies measures that give rise to lively discussions where everyone claims to be an expert. This book guides the reader through themes such as trauma victims, alcohol or drugs driving. 
The 2020 Lifesavers National Conference on Highway Safety Priorities will be held on March 15-17 in Tampa, Florida. The Lifesavers Conference brings together a unique combination of traffic safety and public health professionals, researchers, advocates, practitioners and students committed to sharing best practices, research and policy initiatives that are proven to work.
Tallinn University of Technology (TTU) is organising the 2nd Conference “Vision Zero for Sustainable Road Safety in the Baltic Sea Region 2019” which is going to take place in Tallinn, Estonia, on 4 – 5 December 2019. This conference is a fantastic opportunity for academicians and practitioners to meet and exchange experiences and to learn from the best within road safety including policy, road infrastructure, behavioural aspects and human factors, innovations of vehicles and transportation modes, individual, organizational and political aspects of road safety.
A paper titled “Safety Culture among Private and Professional Drivers in Norway and Greece: Examining the Influence of National Road Safety Culture” authored by Tor-Olav Nævestad, Alexandra Laiou, Ross O. Phillips, Torkel Bjørnskau and George Yannis is now published in Safety Journal. This study investigates road safety culture (RSC) as an explanation for this discrepancy by: (1) Comparing the road safety behaviours among professional and private drivers in Norway and Greece, (2) Examining factors influencing road safety behaviours, focusing especially on national road safety culture, and (3) Examining the influence of road safety behaviours and other factors (e.g., demographic and work-related variables) on accident involvement. The results indicate that aggressive violations are more similar among private and professional drivers within the national samples, than across the national samples, while seat belt use seems to vary according to the professional versus private dimension.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 37th PIN Flash Report “How to improve urban road safety in the EU“, with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report analyses the latest data urban road safety across the EU and other countries that form part of the ETSC Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) programme, and it conclude with more than twenty main recommendations for action at EU. It is highlighted that the problems can be addressed with the right political leadership, resources and energy. But while the EU, national governments and other actors can help provide the knowledge, finance and guidelines to implement the necessary changes, it will often be up to local authorities to implement them effectively. A comprehensive infographic depicts current urban road safety in Europe, with Pedestrians, Motorcyclists and Cyclists accounting for 70% of all urban road fatalities. 
The next edition of the Transport Research Arena Conference (TRA 2020) organised by the European Commisison and the European transport research platforms (ACARE, ALICE, CEDR, ECTP, ERRAC, ERTRAC, ETRA, Waterborne), will take place in Helsinki, Finland from 26-30th April 2020, themed “Rethinking transport – towards clean and inclusive mobility”. Since 2006, TRA is the major European bi-annual transport research event bringing together experts, authorities, industry and all stakeholders to discuss on the newest innovations and the future of mobility and transport and to foster a Europe-wide transformation in all transport modes.
- Submissions for the Journal Track (full papers) until the 16th of June
- Submissions for the Conference track (short papers) until the 30th of June
Vlaamse Stichting Verkeerskunde (VSV) in cooperation with Flanders, Road Safety GB, UHasselt, ETSC and Polis are organising a European Road Safety Summer School which will take place in Mechelen, Belgium, on 26-30 August 2019, targeting road safety professionals. The schedule of the Summer School for these 5 days includes key topics on: a) road safety vision and strategy, b) education, awareness raising and infrastructure, c) technologies, enforcement and integrated policy, d) technical site visits.
The 15th World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR) which was organized by the WCTRS and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) took place with great success on 26-31 May, 2019 at Mumbai, India. For the last 40 years, WCTR has been organised every three years by the WCTR Society. WCTR allowed sharing cutting-edge research and advanced state-of-practice and provided a unique opportunity for experts to exchange ideas in all areas of transport research including Traffic Safety Analysis and Policy (C4 Special Interest Group). NTUA contributed with nine presentations:
- Investigating the Correlation between Driver’s Characteristics and Safety Performance
- Investigation of the correlation between stated and revealed driving behaviour using data collected from on-board diagnostics (OBD) devices
- Driving speed model development using driving data obtained from smartphone sensors
- Hybrid Data Envelopment Analysis for Large-Scale Smartphone Data Modeling
- How unexpected events affect lateral position variability?
- Impacts of large urban regeneration projects: The case of the new Athens Intercity Bus Terminal
- Development a Sustainable Mobility Action Plan for University Campuses
- Future trends in transport workforce based on demographic, behavioural, cultural and socioeconomic factors
- Identifying infrastructure risk factors in Africa
The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report: “New Directions for Data-Driven Transport Safety”, with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report explores how seamless data collection, analysis and sharing can unlock innovations in transport safety. Very often most interventions to improve transport safety are reactions to incidents. However lately, connected vehicles, smartphone apps, ubiquitous sensors, data sharing and machine learning make proactive transport safety interventions possible and prevent crashes before they happen. Drawing on the Safe System approach, this Report examines how transport stakeholders can make better decisions by using more relevant and timely new safety data.
NTUA Professor George Yannis was recently awarded the prestigious Francqui Chair 2019, as proposed by Hasselt University. The Francqui Chair is awarded every year by the Francqui Foundation to eminent academics which are promoting the development of higher education and scientific research in Belgium.
- Inaugural Lecture (19 March 2019): Road safety challenges in the digital era – Is digitalisation boosting road safety?
- Second Lecture (27 March 2019): Road Safety Data Analysis – From Correlation to Causation and Policy Support
- Third Lecture (21 May 2019): Best Practice on Road Infrastructure Safety Management
- Forth Lecture (23 May 2019): Automation and Safety
Make Roads Safe Hellas in collaboration with the National Technical University of Athens, the University of Macedonia, the University of the Aegean, the Hellenic Open University and EASST, released a report titled: “International Tourism and Road Safety in Greece, Country Report 2019”. Make Roads Safe Hellas is a Non-Profit Organisation promoting road safety in Greece which hopes to gain momentum from their study and build support for the establishment of a Safe Tourism Network to ensure that road safety for tourists and travellers is given adequate attention, not just in Greece but across the globe. The Report is based on a survey of almost 1,500 international tourists visiting Athens, Chania, and Thessaloniki in 2018, as well on recent accident statistics from ELSTAT.
NTUA within the framework of the Fifth UN Global Road Safety Week organized a Scientific Workshop titled “Digitalisation and Road Safety Research” which took place with great success on 17 May 2019 in Athens. This Workshop attempted to shed light into the role and the challenges of digitalisation on road safety, through an intensive flow of state-of-the-art presentations of key NTUA road safety research projects and a vivid Expert Panel discussion on new perspectives and horizons of road safety in the digital era in Europe and worldwide. 
Workshop presentations concerned:
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The NTUA Road Safety Observatory – Nrso - Driver needs and behaviour in automated traffic – Drive2theFuture
- Societal impacts of connected and automated vehicles – Levitate
- Smartphone exploitation for event spatial analysis & mapping-Sesame
- Data science techniques for driving behaviour evaluation – OSeven
- Smartphone applications for driver safety behaviour support – BeSmart
- Driver-vehicle-environment interactions and safety tolerance – i-Dreams
- The African Road Safety Observatory – SaferAfrica
- The road safety center of Saudi Arabia– RscKsa
- Measuring risk exposure in Ireland – IrlExpo
- Open science in road safety – BeOpen
- Big data for road safety – ForSafety
- Monitoring road safety culture – SafeCulture
- Monitoring road safety attitudes globally – Esra
- Cycling under the influence of alcohol and drugs – Velivr
- Safety skills of future transportation professionals – Skillful
- Actions to improve drivers’ safety behavior – SafeBehave
- Economic analysis of road infrastructure safety projects – EibCba
- Modelling crash modification factors globally – i-safemodels
- Safety implications from electromobility – e-mopoli
Panel Discussion
The International Motor Vehicle Inspection Committee (CITA), under the patronage of Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, organized an event under the theme: “The future of transport: The challenge of new technologies for road safety“. The event took place with great success in Brussels, Belgium, on 16 May 2019, at Autoworld: Parc du Cinquantenaire. Without doubt vehicle safety is one of the key pillars of an integrated EU road safety strategy. A discussion was made on how to improve road safety and the challenges for the testing and certification of new technologies and components, in order to make them safe and secure during the complete life cycle.
The 5th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS) took place with great success in Heraklion, Crete, on 3-5 May 2019. The purpose of VEHITS 2019 was to bring together engineers, researchers and practitioners interested in the advances and applications in the field of Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems. This conference focused on innovative applications, tools and platforms in all technology areas such as signal processing, wireless communications, informatics and electronics, related to different kinds of vehicles, including cars, off-road vehicles, trains, ships, underwater vehicles, or flying machines, and the intelligent transportation systems that connect and manage large numbers of vehicles, not only in the context of smart cities but in many other application domains.
A paper titled “Safety assessment of control design parameters through vehicle dynamics model” authored by Stergios Mavromatis, Alexandra Laiou, and George Yannis is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. An existing vehicle dynamics model was utilized to define design parameters up to which steady state cornering conditions apply and consequently lift the restrictions of the point mass model. Aiming to assess critical safety concerns in terms of vehicle skidding, the motion of a passenger car was examined over a range of design speed values paired with control design elements from AASHTO 2011 Design Guidelines as well as certain values of poor pavement friction coefficients. For full text just ask us by replying to this email.
The International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF) organised a Meeting in Paris, France, on 2 April 2019, in which the latest international road safety developments were discussed. NTUA contributed actively with the following presentation:
