The infographic of the 2018 NTUA Road Safety Observatory (www.nrso.ntua.gr) activities, highlights one more very intensive year, striving with highly scientific expertise to improve road safety in Greece, in Europe and worldwide. The nrso people with excellent dedication, efficiency and expertise were active in 22 innovative research projects, succeeded to publish 67 scientific papers (21 in peer reviewed journals), reached almost 100.000 nrso website page-views, handled more than 115.000 emails and run more than 4.800 km! 

Basic characteristics of road fatalities in Greece for the period 1991-2017 are summarised in a comprehensive Table prepared by the NTUA Road Safety Observatory (data source: ELSTAT). Since 2007, there are approximately 900 less road fatalities per year in Greece. According to these time series data a spectacular decrease in road fatalities for children 0-14 years old (-71%), young drivers (-61%) and on motorways (-61%) is observed during the last decade. On the contrary, fatalities decrease during the last decade is quite limited for moped riders (-26%), older drivers (-28%) and at rural (36%) and urban (37%) junctions. 

Emmanouil Barmpounakis, Panagiotis Papantoniou, Dimosthenis Pavlou, Dimitris Tselentis and Panos Georgiou PostDoc Researchers of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of NTUA were awarded with the NTUA Thomaidion Award for outstanding publications in scientific journals for the year 2016. The awards for publications in Scientific Journals concerned:

• Barmpounakis E., Vlahogianni E., Golias J.,  Vision-based multivariate statistical modeling for powered two-wheelers maneuverability during overtaking in urban arterials, Transportation Letters, 8:3, 167-176, 2016 
•  Yannis G., Laiou A., Papantoniou P., Gkartzonikas C., Simulation of texting impact on young drivers’ behavior and safety on motorways, Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 41-A, 10-18, 2016 
• Pavlou D., Papantoniou P., Papadimitriou E., Vardaki S., Yannis G., Golias I., Papageorgiou S.G., Which are the effects of driver distraction and brain pathologies on reaction time and accident risk?, Advances in Transportation Studies, Vol.1, 83-98,2016 
• Papadimitriou E.,  Lassarre S., Yannis G., Tselentis D.,  Road, traffic and human factors of pedestrian crossing behaviour: Integrated choice and latent variables models, Transportation Research Record 2586, 2016 
• Christina Plati, Panos Georgiou and Andreas Loizos, Influence of different roller compaction modes on asphalt mix performance, International Journal of Pavement Engineering, 17:1, 64–70, 2016 

A paper titled “Investigation of the effect of tourism on road crashes” authored by Vasileios Bellos, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, and George Yannis is now published in Journal of Transportation Safety & Security. Based on police data on road crashes in Greece for the 5-year period of 2011 to 2015, negative binomial regression models were developed, which led to the conclusion that tourists are more often involved in road crashes in Greece. Furthermore, the increase of the relative rate ratio of road crash involvement for foreign tourists in touristic regions indicates a clear increased accident risk of foreign tourists compared to Greek drivers. 

The European Association of Operators of Toll Road Infrastructures (ASECAP), supported by the Hellenic Association of Toll Road Network (HELLASTRON), organised a Press Conference on Road Safety on the occasion of the EDWARD – European Day without a Road Death 2018, which took place with great success on September 19, 2018. The theme was “Modern motorways: Prevention and Road Safety in Europe and Greece” and Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said: “I am glad to see such an engaging and dedicated contribution of Greece to the third European Day Without A Road Death (EDWARD) taking place this year on 19 September during the European Mobility Week. Thank you GREECE and all involved!”. 

NTUA Professor George Yannis presented recently the Global Road Safety Landscape at the Governing Board Meeting of the Private Sector Global Coalition Together for Safer Roads (TSR) composed by 16 leading global companies, highlighting the key challenges, perspectives and opportunities of global road safety.  

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a report titled “7 SMART Ways of tackling Drink-Driving in Europe”. The report aims to present the wide-ranging approaches used to tackle drink driving in Europe, including legislation (BAC limits, rehabilitation programmes for drink driving offenders), enforcement, technology (alcohol interlocks) campaigns and education.  

The Road Safety Institute ‘Panos Mylonas’ with the support of the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) produced and implemented two video campaigns focusing on driver distraction due to mobile phone use:   and one video campaign focusing on the importance of seat-belt especially at the back-seat, titled: “Seat-belt – The belt which “ties” us with life“: . The objective is to highlight these very crucial road safety risk factors and promote these campaigns through social media. 

The Association for European Transport is organising the 47th European Transport Conference, which will take place in Dublin, Ireland, on 9-11 October 2019. The European Transport Conference (ETC) is the annual conference of the Association for European Transport. Each year the conference presents the opportunity to interact with a range of speakers across the Transport Industry, including several Road Safety Topics. The range of topics, the multi-seminar approach and the networking environment makes ETC unique among transport conferences, making it the established premier event of its type.  

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Report titled “The Status of Traffic Safety and Mobility Education in Europe” with the active contribution of NTUA. Even though the overwhelming majority of European countries consider education as an essential part of the integrated approach to traffic safety, this first overview of traffic safety and mobility education in Europe demonstrates that in practice road safety education in schools at all levels is not sufficient. Only in the Czech Republic, Ireland and Germany is road safety education provided at all levels.  

The Living and Walking in Cities Conference, organised by the Department of Civil, Environmental, Architectural Engineering and Mathematics of Universita Degli Studi di Brescia, now in its 24rd edition, will be held in Brescia, on 12-13 September 2019. This Conference traditionally looks at different themes concerning the quality of life in urban areas and the goal of this event is to gather researchers, road users, administrators, technicians, city representatives and experts aiming to discuss problems that affect the safety of pedestrians in the city, especially of children and persons with reduced mobility. The conference covers international issues, national and local policies and the implementation of projects at the local level. 

The Road Safety Awards in Greece were established in 2018 by the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE), HELLASTRON and the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT). This year, two awards have been announced: the first one concerns the “Best Road Safety Young Researcher Publication” addressed to students, graduates, postgraduate, doctoral or postdoctoral researchers and the second one concerns the “Best Road Safety Action” addressed to Organisations and Institutes. 

The next International Symposium for Highway Geometric Design will be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on 28 June – 1 July, 2020. Held every five years, the Symposium aims to encourage the continuous improvement of highway geometric design. This event focuses on the latest breakthrough practices relating to highway engineering in their different life phases, including daily operational effects and safe highway designs. Traditionally, the ISHGD Symposium consists of informative podium sessions on a range of geometric design issues from around the world, combined with country reports featuring recent local developments in road design, policy and practices, technical software demos, design and research products and technical tours of local highway design and construction practices. 

The City of Edmonton’s Traffic Safety section is organizing T2019, the 22nd International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety (ICADTS) Conference, which will be held in Edmonton, Canada, on 18-21 August 2019. Hosted on a rotating basis amongst a range of relevant organizations including Edmonton’s own Traffic Safety section, this conference brings together delegates drawn from the areas of public health and safety, traffic, and transport psychology, public health, law, medicine, economics, law enforcement, public policy, education, pharmacology, toxicology, forensic science, human factors, and alcohol intervention and rehabilitation.  

The next edition of the Transport Research Arena Conference (TRA 2020), will take place in Helsinki, Finland from 26-30th April 2020. With the theme of “Enabling the transformation – transport and mobility (r)evolution for smart, green and integrated society” TRA 2020 will showcase the disruption of transport and mobility RDI, as well as ways to enable and foster a Europe-wide transformation in all transport modes. 

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) 98th Annual Meeting was held with great success in Washington, D.C., on 13-17 January 2019. The meeting program covered all transportation modes, with more than 5,000 presentations in nearly 800 sessions and workshops, addressing topics of interest to policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions. A number of sessions and workshops focused on the spotlight theme for the 2019 meeting: Transportation for a Smart, Sustainable, and Equitable Future.   NTUA road safety presentations concerned:

•   How much driving data do we need to assess driver behavior?
•   Investigating the Temporal Evolution of Driving Safety Efficiency Using Data Collected from Smartphone Sensors
•   Time series classification using imbalanced learning for real-time safety assessment
•  Road Safety Data, Knowledge and Decision Support Systems Global Challenges in the Digital Era
•  The African Road Safety Observatory
•  Impaired Cycling and Crash Involvement: A Survey Across OECD Countries on Data Availability and Legislation

NTUA Road Safety Research is ranked 2nd in Europe and 6th worldwide according to a recent study titled: “Visualization and analysis of mapping knowledge domain of road safety studies“, published at the leading safety Scientific Journal Accident Analysis and Prevention. Moreover, NTUA Prof. George Yannis appears to be among the most productive scientific authors worldwide in the field of road safety. This ranking is based on a systematic analysis of all road safety studies published on Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) between 2000 and 2018, containing several interesting performance indicators on road safety research worldwide (topics, trends, papers, journals, universities).   

The 47th Annual ASECAP Conference (known as 47th ASECAP Information Days) will take place on 29-31 May, 2019 in Costa Navarino, Messinia, in southwestern Peloponnese in Greece. Given the disruptive nature of the technological developments of the last 10 years and the trends foreseen which will dramatically impact mobility, ASECAP’s Technical Program Committee is issuing an Open Invitation for Presentations in order to attract presenters in the very wide field of Development, Financing, Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Motorways and all related mobility fields and activities. 

A paper titled “Road safety behavior of drivers with neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions: an interdisciplinary Structural Equation Model analysis approach” authored by Dimosthenis Pavlou and George Yannis is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This research suggests the evaluation of driving behavior by using multiple driving indexes in a combined integrated manner, through a large-scale driving simulator experiment, comprising medical/neurological and neuropsychological assessments of 225 active drivers, and a set of driving tasks for different traffic volumes, different driving environments, including in-vehicle distraction conditions. The statistical analysis methodology developed and implemented was based on Principal Component Analysis and Structural Equation Models (SEMs). SEM results indicated that the impact of neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions is significantly detrimental on the latent variables “driving performance” and on the observed variables “reaction time” and “accident probability”. The AD group had the worse driving behavior profile among the examined groups with neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a briefing synthesis titled “EU Strategy for Automated Mobility”. ETSC warmly welcomes and fully agree with the Commission’s acknowledgement that when it comes to automated mobility, “only the highest safety and security standards will suffice”. This must remain the guiding principle in the years to come. Automated driving has the potential to significantly improve road safety. However, recent collisions involving vehicles with automated technology on board demonstrate that automated driving may also pose new risks to road safety, and that the technology is not yet mature.