The European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC), the European Green Vehicles Initiative Association (EGVIA) and the European Commission are organising the 4th European-wide Conference dedicated to the presentation of results from road transport research in H2020 funded projects (H2020RTR), which will be held on 30 November & 1 December 2020. The Conference aims at presenting what the projects have discovered, how they overcame the hurdles and challenges and resolved them, and what are the next research steps in the fields covered by their research.  

The International Road Federation (IRF), together with Qatar University, Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Center, Khatib and Alami and World Conference on Transport Research Society, are organising an Online Technical Workshop on “Role of Road Safety Audits in Improving Traffic Safety”, which will be held on 8-10 November 2020.  The Workshop aims at building the understanding of the importance and benefits of RSAs. Furthermore, it provides basic information on the scope and procedure of RSAs as well as the role and skills of the RSA team.  

IRF is organising an online conference titled “Roads to Recovery: a Sustainable Mobility for a Sustainable Future” which will be held on 12 November 2020. The main objective of the conference is to discuss priorities for the road sector going forward. The conference will be structured around three main sessions: High-Level Panel debate on Recovery for the Road Sector, Safer roads to save lives, Fostering innovation to accelerate road sector transformation. 

Within the 18th European Week of Regions and Cities organised by the European Committee of the Regions,  RADAR and SLAIN project was featured in the session ”Modelling the future of Road Safety using Network-wide Risk Assessment”, which was held with great success on 14 October 2020 at 11:00 am-12:00 pm CET.  How do you design a safe road infrastructure? How can you identify risk on roads? How do you propose an economically viable crash countermeasure? These were some of the questions that were discussed at this session. Invited speakers were George Yannis, Lina Konstantinopoulou, Marko Sevrovic, moderated by Olivera Rozi.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Network-wide Road Safety Assessment

POLIS in cooperation with the LEVITATE and CoEXist projects organised with great success a webinar titled “Mobilising Mobility: Impact assessment of automated vehicles” which was held on 15 October 2020. The Webinar provided insights into the methods developed for assessing the impacts of automated vehicles across a range of mobility domains and the findings from their application in real-life scenarios and using policy options such as parking regulation, road pricing and dedicated AV lanes.  

European Commission DG Move organised an executive seminar titled “Speed and Speed Management in Road Safety Policy” which was held online and in Brussels, on 8 October 2020. This seminar brought together academics and practitioners from across the EU to discuss all aspects of the “factor speed”: vehicles and technology, infrastructure design, speed limits and enforcement, as well as links with sustainable mobility (emissions, air quality, noise).     NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Measuring Speeds

The Forum of European Road Safety Research Organisations (FERSI) is organising the FERSI conference 2021 which will take place on 28-29 October 2021 in Hague, Netherlands. The conference focuses on the exchange of national and regional experiences with implementing evidence-based road safety measures, both positive and negative ones. There will be a specific focus on the road to successful implementation, including overcoming the barriers encountered along the way. The conference will allow for discussion of promising ways to facilitate the decision making and implementation process of proven (cost-)effective but politically sensitive road safety measures. 

A paper titled “Car drivers’ road safety performance: A benchmark across 32 countries” authored by C. Pires, K. Torfs, A. Areal, C. Goldenbel, W. Vanlaar, M. A. Granie, Y. A. Stürmer, D. S. Usami, S. Kaiser, D. Jankowska-Karpa, D. Nikolaou, H. Holte, T. Kakinuma, J. Trigoso, W. Van den Berghe, U. Meesmann, is now published in the Journal of IATSS. This paper is based on the second edition of the E-Survey of Road Users’ Attitudes (ESRA), an online survey carried out in 2018 and includes data from more than 35,000 road users across 32 countries. The objective is to present the main results of the ESRA survey regarding the four most important risky driving behaviours in traffic: driving under the influence (alcohol/drugs), speeding, mobile phone use while driving, and fatigued driving. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Position Paper concerning the European Commission roadworthiness package implementation report for Directives 2014/45/EC on periodic roadworthiness tests, 2014/47/EC on technical roadside inspections of commercial vehicles and 2014/46/EC on issuing registration certificates. ETSC has prepared this updated position paper to feed into this process including priorities not taken on board last time and new developments such as eCall and automation.   

The Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI), a program of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO),  in partnership with the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) published recently a new Document titled “iRAP Star Ratings of NACTO-GDCI’s Global Street Design Guide”. Released in 2016, the Global Street Design Guide has served as a blueprint for safer and higher-performing streets, and as a tool for addressing the 1.35 million road accident deaths and up to 50 million injuries that occur each year as a result of poorly-designed roads. As such, iRAP’s Star Rating methodology offers a useful framework for validating the tools and transformations featured in the publication.  

The International Council for Road Safety International (ICoRSI) is organising a series of twelve Global Road Safety Dialogues on current key issues in road safety, which will be held online on 20 October – 5 November 2020. Each dialogue features Key International Road Safety Experts on the subject who will be challenged by an Interlocutor on issues dealing with road safety interventions and research around the world.  

The European Union Road Federation (ERF) is organising a Roadside Safety Event which will be held on-line on 15 December 2020. Topics for this event include, but are not limited to: EN 1317 & CE Marking, CPR and Road Restraint Systems, Barrier installation, BIM, Simulations, Motorcyclist Protection Systems.  Deadline for submission: 18 November 2020

International Cycling Safety Conference (ICSC2020) is organising a webinar titled “Single bicycle crashes as a rising problem” wich will be held on 5^th November 2020, 15:00-17:00 CET (9:00-11:00 EST). The large majority of serious injuries among cyclists are due to single crashes and in a few countries the same applies to cyclist deaths. This special session will highlight the size of the problem, trends, existing data and knowledge and provide a discussion about why so little is known about causes and measures to address single-bicycle crashes.     

The International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences (IATSS) is organising the 6th Global Interactive Forum on Traffic & Safety which will be held on-line on 26 November 2020. Researchers and practitioners at this symposium will clarify the definition and measurement “traffic culture” and explore its relationship with road user behavior and traffic safety stakeholder actions. By supporting common language and understanding of traffic safety culture, different countries will be better to work together to reduce traffic crashes globally. The results of these discussions are expected to pave the way for implementing more effective traffic safety measures in order of importance and urgency. 

The European Union Road Federation  (ERF) is organising a conference titled “Shaping the Future of New Mobility” which will be held on-line on Wednesday  14 October  2020, 15.00 – 17.00 CET. The ERF, FIEC, the French Road Federation, the FNTP and the CICA initiated in March 2019 an international study to identify the impact of the new mobility revolution and how road infrastructure should address it. The final outputs of the study will be unveiled and debated during the conference. The event will bring together stakeholders from different sectors to break down existing silos and promote constructive dialogue for the benefit of all road users, and thus shape the future of the road infrastructure.  

A new book titled ‘Highway Safety Analytics and Modeling‘ authored by Dominique Lord, Xiao Qin, Srinivas R. Geedipally, is going to be published in March 2021. This book covers the key elements needed for making effective transportation engineering and policy decisions based on highway crash data analysis. It covers all aspects of the decision-making process, from collecting and assembling data to making decisions based on the results of the analyses. The book discusses the challenges with crash and naturalistic data, identifying problems and proposing best methods to solving them. It examines the nuances associated with crash data analysis, showing how to develop countermeasures, policies, and programs to reduce the frequency and severity of traffic crashes. 

Since 56 years, the  International Road Federation (IRF) World Road Statistics (WRS) continues to be the major comprehensive, universal source of statistical data on road networks, traffic and inland transport, including traffic accidents. This year the WRS 2020 (data 2013-2018) covers over 200 countries, 100 indicators, with the active contribution of NTUA for the Greek data. This year a variety of new packages are offered comprising the WRS Book, the WRS Excel file and the IRF Data Warehouse (in cooperation with Total Foundation), an online platform allowing data visualisation and comparisons between countries/ indicators. 

The Institute of Communication & Computer Systems within the EU funded Horizon 2020 project L3Pilot organised a Summer School titled “Developing and Testing Automated Driving“, which was held on-line with great success, on 9-10 September 2020. The L3Pilot Summer School 2020 focused on the theory and practice of Automated Driving Implementation and Testing and in particular on the progress of the largest European pilot-testing of SAE Level 3 driving functions implemented by L3Pilot partners.  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  A methodological framework from data collection to impact assessment of autonomous vehicles

The IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) organised the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC) which was held on-line, on 20-23 September 2020. The conference focused on new developments in theory, analysis, simulation and modeling, experimentation, demonstration, case studies, field operational tests, and deployments.  NTUA actively contributed with the following paper and presentation:   Impacts of Autonomous Shuttle Services on Traffic, Safety and Environment for Future Mobility Scenarios

The SHOW (SHared automation Operating models for Worldwide adoption) project organised its 1st Pan-European Workshop, titled «How to make CCAM in Cities a reality» which was held on-line on 18 September 2020. In this workshop, a selection of high-level keynote speakers shared their views and experiences about Connected and Cooperative Automated Mobility, while interactive sessions about Use Cases for CCAV in Urban Mobility and Best Practices for Business and Operating Models in Europe and worldwide took place.