The city of Edmonton organized the 10th Annual International Conference on Urban Traffic Safety, which took place with great success on July 9th to the 12th, 2018 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Just as all road users feel the impact of traffic safety, the responsibility to promote traffic safety was shared by many disciplines. This multidisciplinary approach is more evident now than it ever was before. When jurisdictions and agencies refer to Vision Zero Action Plans and Road Safety Strategies, their underlying theme revolves around collaborating with all partners whether they are engineers, enforcement officers, medical professionals, planners, political leaders, or public health representatives. 
Risks and Countermeasures for Road Traffic of the Elderly in Europe
The Annual Road Safety Conference of the Bar Ilan University, will be held on 5th July 2018 in Tel Aviv, Israel. The conference will deal with pedestrians as well as with drivers’ behavior, the connection between them and solutions for improving safety for road users. This year the Keynote Speaker will be Prof. Neville Stanton, PhD, DSc, Head of Human Factors Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, UK, and his presentation will concern: “Driver Reactions to Vehicle Automation”.
According to the EU road fatalities infographic of the NTUA Road Safety Observatory, twelve countries have a better performance than the EU average, namely Sweden, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Spain, Malta, Austria, and Luxembourg. Greece has been ranked 23rd in 2017. Estonia demonstrated the highest road fatalities rate reduction (64%) in the last decade, followed by Lithuania (57%), whereas the EU average 10-year reduction is 38% and for Greece is 51%. 
Serious crashes on inter-urban roads may be slashed by a quarter over the next 30-40 years with the introduction of automated vehicles. However, the journey may be far from easy, with a mixed fleet transition and vital need for roads that cars can read, according to recently released EuroRAP report. The Report, the third in the “Roads that Cars Can Read” series, examines the relationship between road infrastructure and safety for conventional and increasingly-autonomous vehicles (AVs) and provides a framework for infrastructure safety investment.
The Annual European Safety and Reliability Conference ESREL 2018 is an international conference under the auspices of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA), which took place with great success on 17-21 June 2018 in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. The topic for ESREL 2018 was “Safe Societies in a Changing World” and the goal of the conference was to advance in the understanding, modeling, and management of the complexity of the risk, safety and reliability fields characterizing our world, now and in the future. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:
A paper titled “Public opinion on Usage-Based Motor Insurance Schemes: a stated preference approach” authored by Dimitris Tselentis, Akis Theofilatos, George Yannis and Manos Konstantinopoulos is now published in Travel Behaviour and Society scientific Journal. This paper aims to investigate which parameters affect users’ willingness to pay for alternative usage-based motor insurance pricing schemes such as Pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) and Pay-as-how-you-drive (PHYD). Results indicated that women and smartphone owners are more likely to choose a new insurance schemes. Kilometers and cost reduction were also found to affect similarly the choice for both Usage-Based-Motor Insurance (UBI). Moreover, the higher the speed reduction imposed to the driver, the lower the probability of the UBI scheme to choose it. 
NTUA Professor George Yannis gave a Lecture at the European Commission – DG for Research and Innovation on 11 June 2018 in Brussels, titled “Road Safety in Africa and Beyond“. The Lecture focused on various aspects of road safety in Africa and worldwide, on the the SaferAfrica research project and on the respective EU international cooperation policies in the field, followed by a vivid discussion on key road safety problems and the EC role for potential policies, programmes and measures for the improvement of road safety in Africa and worldwide.
Every year Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, loses many valuable human lives and incurs enormous economic costs caused by road accidents. The Traffic Safety Agency of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in cooperation with the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) are organizing the 7th International Conference Road Safety in Local Community, which will take place in Banja Luca, Bosnia and Herzegovina on 25-26 October 2018 aiming to constantly strengthen and develop capacities at the local level and create groups of experts who will have enough enthusiasm, courage and will to fight with this problem facing the country.
The Updated Main Report (2017 edition) of the European Survey of Road users’ safety Attitudes (ESRA) has been published containing the results from the survey in 38 countries, including 13 Latin America countries, with the active contribution of NTUA. The updated version of the ESRA webpage with Deliverables and Publications includes the 2017 Main Report in 3 languages (English, Spanish, French), six Thematic Reports on European drivers attitudes, and the country fact sheets.
The European Union Road Federation (ERF) and the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations (FEMA) have published a joint position paper, called ‘Improving infrastructure safety for powered two-wheelers’. Only in 2017 power two-wheelers fatalities (motorcycles and mopeds) counted for 17% of the total road victims, while accounting only for 1,8% of the total traffic flow. Both ERF and FEMA strongly believe that road safety for motorcyclists can be significantly improved by looking at the design of road infrastructure.
The Road Safety Institute Panos Mylonas together with the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) and the support of the Brewers of Europe, organised an international conference on tackling drink-driving as part of the SMART (Sober Mobility Across Road Transport) project which took place with great success in Athens, Greece, on 21 June 2018. The debate addressed policy and practice on enforcement, penalties, rehabilitation, alcohol interlocks and other measures to discourage and prevent drink driving, with focus on improved driver behaviour and safety performance in Greece. NTUA presentation concerned: Drinking and driving in Greece
The Focus Area Mobility & Transportation Systems of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) organized the International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport (mobil.TUM 2018) which took place with great success on June 13th – 14th 2018, in Munich, Germany. The theme of the conference was Urban Mobility – Shaping the Future Together. Road safety was one of the key discussion areas enabling inspiration from the latest innovations and exploring new directions for shaping the future of urban mobility and safety. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:
- How an unexpected incident affects speed related driving performance measures
- Exploring Crash Injury Severity on Urban Motorways by Applying Finite Mixture Model
- Utilizing Real-time Traffic and Weather Data to Explore Crash Frequency on Urban Motorways: A Cusp Catastrophe Approach
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) published the 12th edition of PIN Annual Report, with the active contribution of NTUA, presented at the 2018 PIN Conference which took place with great success on 18 June, 2018 in Brussels. 25,250 people lost their lives on the EU roads in 2017, representing a 2% reduction on the 2016 figure. There has been progress since 2010 but time is running out and the 2020 target is now highly unlikely to be met. Strong political will and urgent measures are still needed in all EU Member States to narrow the gap between the desired and the actual EU progress.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 35th PIN Flash Report “An Overview of Road Death Data Collection in the EU“, with the active contribution of NTUA. The goal of this PIN Flash Report is to gather information on road death data collection in different PIN countries and to find out if and how countries cross-check or complement road death data recorded by the police with alternative sources. This Report provides very useful information to exchange good practice on how to improve road death data collection and recording.
The European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) published a Report on the preparatory work for an EU road safety strategy 2020-2030. This Report was prepared by Jeanne Breen assisted by SWOV and Loughborough University’s Design School. The Commission set three objectives to be addressed: 1) assess the outcome of the road safety policy framework to 2017; 2) consider current and future changes in mobility and its consequences and challenges in relation to road safety; and 3) assist in the preparation of the EU road safety framework for 2020-2030.
Dr. Panagiotis Papantoniou obtained the NTUA Thomaidion Αward 2017 for the publication of the journal paper titled “Simulation of Texting Impact on Young Drivers’ Behaviour and Safety on Motorways”, in the Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour.
Dr. Dimosthenis Pavlou obtained the NTUA Thomaidion Αward 2017 for the publication of the journal paper titled “Which are the effects of driver distraction and brain pathologies on reaction time and accident risk?”, in the Advances in Transportation Studies.
Dimitris Tselentis obtained the NTUA Thomaidion Αward 2017 for the publication of the journal paper titled “Road, Tragic and Human Factors of Pedestrian Crossing Behavior: Integrated Choice and Latent Variables Models”, in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board.
A paper titled “Impact of real-time traffic characteristics on crash occurrence: The case of rare events” authored by Athanasios Theofilatos, George Yannis, Pantelis Kopelias and Fanis Papadimitriou is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention Journal. This paper investigates crash likelihood by utilizing real-time traffic data from three random loop detectors in the Attica Tollway located in Greater Athens Area in Greece and by proposing a framework driven by appropriate statistical models (Bias Correction and Firth method) in order to overcome the problems that arise when the number of crashes is very low. Under this approach instead of using traditional logistic regression methods, crashes are considered as rare events. The method and findings of the study provide insights on the mechanism of crash occurrence and also revealed that lower speeds are more likely to result in accident.
Since 53 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 2017 (data 2010-2015) 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 Hellenic Chambers Transport Association (EESYM) organised the 17th Panhellenic Transport Chamber Conference which took place with great success on Saturday 2 June 2018 in Livadia, Greece. One of the key Conference topics was fleet safety. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation: Road transport safety in Greece
