Since 54 years, the International Road Federation (IRF) World Road Statistics (WRS) continue to be the major comprehensive, universal source of statistical data on road networks, traffic and inland transport. Over the past years, the WRS have proved to be an invaluable and internationally accepted reference tool for governments, NGOs, investments banks, research institutes and anyone analyzing and reporting trends in key subject areas like traffic volumes and vehicle usage, road expenditure, road safety, energy consumption and emissions. This year, the WRS 2018 (data 2011-2016) features more than 205 countries, with data on over 45 road related topics, presented in nine substantive sections, with the active contribution of NTUA for the Greek data. 
The 8th conference of European Association for Research in Transportation (hEART) will take place in Budapest on 4-6 September 2019. The conference is organized by the Faculty of Transportation Engineering and Vehicle Engineering at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), and will cover relevant areas of transportation research with specific focus on methods, models and planning of transport systems. The aim of the conference is to connect researchers in transport modeling, transport economics and transport policy with advanced practice. Bringing together leading experts and promising young researchers, the symposium offers an opportunity for scientific discussion and interaction in relatively small groups. The conference will be accompanied by social events, and a summer school intended for PhD students the day before the symposium.
InDeV recently published a handbook with focus on vulnerable road users entitled: How to analyse accident causation? This handbook was developed to help road safety professionals diagnose road safety problems by gaining more insights into the mistakes by road users that lead to collision. It describes various road safety methods that can be applied for studying the safety of vulnerable (and other) road users, including: accident data analysis, conflict and behavioural observations, self-reporting and naturalistic studies and road safety audit and inspection. 
The United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund which launched in April 2018, took an important step towards becoming operational, with the first meetings of its Advisory Board (9 August) and Steering Committee (10 August) taking place in Geneva. The Trust Fund aims to catalyze efforts to address the critical global road safety situation by bridging the gaps in the mobilization of resources and ensuring the effective coordination of action at all levels. Representatives from five Member States representing each of the United Nations Regions – Argentina, Lebanon, Nigeria, Russia, Sweden – have been appointed to the Fund’s Advisory Board, alongside UN, private sector donor, civil society and academic partners, enshrining the Fund’s broad partnership-based approach to improving road safety.
The Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) of the European Commission released the Statistical Pocketbook 2018 ‘EU Transport in figures‘. In this Statistical Pocketbook, key road safety Tables are contained, together with several other Tables on transport statistics, providing a complete picture of current trends in transport in Europe. Data on road fatalities for the EU member states and associate countries allow for time series comparisons and country rankings.
EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc recently announced the appointment of Matthew Baldwin as European Coordinator for Road Safety to help drive forward the new road safety strategy as set out under the key actions in the Commission’s third Mobility Package to modernise Europe’s transport system in May 2018. The role will involve the coordination of road safety efforts with Member States, the European Parliament, cities, regions and all stakeholders in the road safety community.
The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) and the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly co-organized the 7th pan-Hellenic Road Safety Conference, which was held with great success in Larissa, Greece on October 11-12, 2018. The main objectives of the Conference were to investigate and evaluate the level of road safety in Greece, as well as the efforts and innovations that are designed and implemented to improve road safety of drivers, vehicles and pedestrians in the Greek road network.
NTUA actively contributed with the following 12 presentations (full papers with review and presentation):
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Overview of the SafetyCube project: Towards a European Road Safety Decision Support System - SafeFITS: A Global Road Safety Model
- The African Road Safety Observatory – African RSO
- Safety culture among private and professional drivers: Norway and Greece
- How is Older Drivers Safety enhanced by In-Vehicle Assistance Systems?
- Exploration of real-time crash likelihood of Powered-Two Wheelers in Greece
- Quantifying the Need for Driving Data Collection in Driving Behaviour Assessment Using Smartphone Data
- Investigating average speed after an unexpected event through a driving simulator experiment
- Analysis of the impact of autonomous vehicles to travel behaviour
- Comparative analysis of young drivers behaviour in normal and simulated conditions in urban environment
- The effect of socioeconomics and transportation conditions on road safety in the European Union
- Critical driver behaviour and risk factors in Europe
A paper titled “Capturing the effects of texting on young drivers behaviour based on copula and Gaussian Mixture Models” authored by Loukas Dimitriou, Katerina Stylianou, and George Yannis is now published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. This research effort aims to investigate the impact of texting on young drivers’ behavior and safety based on data from driving simulator experiments, for different driving contexts, like motorways, urban and rural roads, during daytime and night, and for alternative weather conditions (‘clear sky’ and rain). GMMs application showed that drivers using mobile phones who were involved in a collision presented a different driving behavior compared to the drivers who were occupied but were not involved in a collision. 
The Global Alliance for NGOs for Road Safety is organizing the 1st African Road Safety Forum which is going to take place on 13-15 November 2018 in Marrakech, Morocco. The 1st African Road Safety Film Festival aims to reinforce, through images and films, awareness of the dangers of road traffic and actions that can reduce the 1.25 million deaths and 50 million injuries that occur on the world’s roads each year. The main objective is to bring road safety to the political attention of the African continent to achieve the goals of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020 and the UN Sustainable Development Agenda and to promote international cooperation in the field of road safety and sustainable mobility.
The European Traffic Police Network (TISPOL) together with the European Commission DG Move Road Safety Unit have launched the project EDWARD – the European Day Without A Road Death 2018. This year the European Day without a Road Death took place on Wednesday 19 September 2018. Several events, initiatives and promotional activity right across Europe will take place. Moreover, in the EDWARD website lots of new resources can be found, artwork can be downloaded (including images and Infographics), a countdown timer to the day itself, an interactive map and a brand new pledge to sign. 
The 25th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, organised by ERTICO – ITS Europe together with ITS America, ITS Asia took place with great success in Copenhagen, on 17-21 September 2018. The Congress provided the ideal opportunity for all stakeholders to come together, discuss and make the necessary contacts to move initiatives forward and to develop their business by exhibiting and demonstrating state of the art ITS solutions. The Congress also showcased the latest ITS achievements, and can help increase awareness of ITS in the Host region itself. 
The ITS Congress consist of three main areas:
- Congress programme sessions and presentations of the latest developments in ITS
- Demonstrations – showcases of current ITS technology being developed and deployed throughout the world)
- Exhibition – exhibition booths and dedicated sessions/events
Ethos Events in collaboration with the financial and business portal banks.com.gr and the magazine CHRIMA are organizing for the second consecutive year the 2nd Auto Forum titled: “Change your car!”. The conference will take place on 7 November 2018 in Athens. The subject of the 2nd Auto Forum is the latest technological advances in the field of passive safety in the automotive sector and the need for consumers to understand the potential of the new technology in order to “escape” untouchable or at least slightly injured after a violent collision caused by a traffic accident.
The Eurostat regional yearbook 2018 gives a detailed picture relating to a broad range of statistical topics across the regions of the EU Member States, as well as the regions of the EFTA and candidate countries, including the European Regions with the lowest and highest road accident rates. Each chapter presents statistical information in maps, tables, figures and infographics, accompanied by a descriptive analysis highlighting the main findings.
The International Road Federation (Geneva, Switzerland) along with the Arab Road Safety Organization (AROSO), the Emirati Traffic Safety Society (ETSS), La Prevention Routière Internationale (PRI) is co-organizing an International Conference on: ” Safer Roads & Mobility” which is going to be held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, on 24 – 25th, October, 2018. The conference program will focus specifically on Pillar II “Safer Roads and Mobility” of the Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) due to its sensitive impact on reducing road traffic fatalities.
The 2018 International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury Europe Conference took place with great success in Athens, Greece, on 12-14 September 2018. The focus of IRCOBI is on the avoidance and reduction of the severity of traffic accidents, with special emphasis on advanced safety technologies and the biomechanics of injury.
NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation: A preliminary analysis of in-depth accident data for powered two-wheelers and bicycles in Europe
The chair of Transportation System Engineering of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) co-organised the 7th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation (hEART), which took place with great success in September 5-7 2018 in Athens, Greece. hEART is an interdisciplinary research conference, covering all areas of transportation research, with a focus on quantitative methods and analysis of transport systems. The aim of the Symposium was to connect research in transport modelling, transport economics and transport policy with advanced practice. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:
The 17th International Alcohol Interlock Symposium organised by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF), took place with great success on 19-21 August 2018, in Austin-Texas, USA. This year’s event will feature a theme surrounding the “Versatility of Alcohol Interlocks”, meant to emphasize the potential interlocks have to deal with the increasing availability of other impairing substances that can be used in combination with alcohol. As interlock technology evolves and devices become easier to use and less intrusive, it becomes increasingly important to understand how intelligent devices can enhance road safety globally.
The 7th International Symposium on Naturalistic Driving Research is organized by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VVTI) and National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (NSTSCE) and was held in Blacksburg, Virginia on August 28-30, 2018. The 7th International Naturalistic Driving Research Symposium provided with an overview of international naturalistic driving and riding studies and insight into the next generation of this type of studies, in addition to the opportunity to interact with panelists to discuss naturalistic driving in their respective countries.
A Diploma Thesis titled “The effect of anger on driver behavior and safety” was presented by Orestis Gavalas in July 2018. The aim of the Diploma Thesis is to investigate the effect of anger on driver behavior and safety. In order to achieve this goal, a driving simulator experiment was conducted and a questionnaire including the DAX scale was filled in a sample of 125 drivers. The collected data were grouped into anger components using the factor analysis method. Subsequently, both linear and logarithmic regression models were developed. Valuable conclusions were reached including men demonstrating higher levels of driving anger as well as that anger decreases with increasing age. The presence of anger is related to the increase in average speed, the reduction of headway (measured in time) and the increase in the probability of being involved in an accident and a road traffic infringement. On the other hand, forgiveness and noble mindedness lead to fundamentally opposite effects.
SafetyCube is a research project funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, in the domain of Road Safety. The latest SafetyCube newsletter is now available, highlighting the innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS) which is online already one year, enabling policy-makers and stakeholders to select and implement the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities in Europe and worldwide.
