Road traffic crashes are not just statistics, they affect real lives and real people. Many people have been affected by road traffic crashes, or know people whose lives and relationships have been torn apart by these needless tragedies. The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety launched a survey aiming to bring forth the voices of people to highlight the problem and call for governments to act urgently. The results will be released at the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety and disseminated through press releases, publications, mass and social media. They will provide evidence to show government leaders what needs to be done at local, regional, and global levels to save lives. 

The AIIT 2nd international congress on  Transport Infrastructure and Systems in a changing world “Towards a more sustainable, reliable and smarter mobility” took place with great success on 23rd – 24th September 2019, in Rome. The objective of the Congress was to promote the knowledge of the new trends of development of mobility systems and transport infrastructures. The Congress aimed at providing a forum for discussion, interactions and exchange among researchers, scientists and engineers whose fields of interest concern transport and infrastructure engineering including traffic safety.  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:

•   Improving road safety knowledge in Africa through crowdsourcing: the African Road Safety Observatory
•   Crest Vertical Curvature Safety Assessment through Variable Grade Stopping Sight Distance Control

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 2019. This year the European Day without a Road Death took place on 26 September 2019. Several events, initiatives and promotional activity right across Europe had taken place. Moreover, in the EDWARD website lots of new resources were found, artwork was downloaded (including images and Infographics), a countdown timer to the day itself, an interactive map and a brand new pledge to sign.  

SaferAfrica Final Conference “Results and future perspectives for road safety in Africa” took place with great success in Tunis (Tunisia) on 18^th of September. Prominent international institutions, African regional and national bodies’ representatives, policymakers, researchers and civil society organizations joined the dialogue for a better road safety management throughout the Continent. The most innovative results of SaferAfrica Project are the African Road Safety Observatory and the African-European Dialogue Platform on Road Safety which has linked policymakers, donors and professionals engaged in road safety to plan and design road safety actions.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:   Road Safety Knowledge and Data

AISICO s.r.l. and ERF  jointly organized the International Conference on Road Safety for Motorcyclists that took place with great success at Pereto, Italy, on September 20, 2019. This successful event gathered more than 200 participants, with representatives from the industry, European Associations and Academics. The great variety of point of views generated a constructive dialogue and allowed to get different insights on the topic, not only technical and regulatory (like for example updates on the European Norm EN-1317), but also addressed health and biomechanical issues, thus covering a broad range of topics related to the safety of motorcyclist. 

During the European Mobility Week 2019, the European Commission and the EU Member States handed over to Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety the commitment of halving the number of fatalities and serious injuries on European roads between 2020 and 2030, within the way forward to the Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm in February 2020.  On the occasion, Commissioner Violeta Bulc also announced an “Urban Road Safety Award” for cities, to be handed out next spring. 

Within the European Mobility Week 2019, the European Commission and the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety co-organised a Road Safety Roundtable in Brussels on 16 September. During this event, a commitment from European cities, coordinated by POLIS and Eurocities, entitled “The New Paradigm for Safe City Streets” was handed over including 10 principles to be recognized by the cities, as necessary for sound and effective action for traffic safety.  

Road deaths and serious injuries are not just unfortunate accidents. They are predictable, preventable, and unacceptable. Evidence shows that setting a road safety target is an effective way to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured in traffic crashes. That is why the Towards Zero Foundation’s #50by30 campaign calls for a new target to halve road deaths and serious injuries in a new decade of SDG action for road safety to 2030. A new target and a new decade of action will help to save 675,000 lives a year, accelerate progress in global road injury prevention, and work towards a world eventually free from road fatalities and serious injuries.  

The UN General Assembly published recently a Report on Improving Global Road Safety, prepared by the World Health Organization in consultation with the United Nations regional commissions and other partners of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration. The Report highlights that while the number of road traffic deaths has stabilized, as indicated in the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018, significant reductions have not been observed, and road traffic injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and young adults between the ages of 5 and 29 years. 

Boussias Communications organized the 2019 Connected Cars Conference which took place with great success in Athens on 18th September 2019. The conference covered issues related to the major future changes coming in the field of vehicles, fleet management and transport in general, including safety.  Connected Cars Conference 2019 is set to serve as the platform for transferring the necessary know-how and information on the cutting-edge technologies that characterize the new vehicle era.  

Participate now at the driver telematics survey of the Horizons 2020 research project i-Dreams. The i-Dreams project develops a highly innovative driver monitoring system that will provide interventions to keep drivers within a safe driving zone, applicable in several transport modes: passenger cars, trucks, buses, trains, trams. You can submit your valuable contribution by filling-in the 15-minute online survey available at the following link. 

You can also sign up to the i-DREAMS newsletter here

NTUA Professor George Yannis gave a Lecture titled: Digital Road Safety at the Research and Innovation in Safe and Smart Mobility Seminar, a new initiative of Loughborough University to discuss new multidisciplinary mobility challenges. The Lecture took place with great success on Wednesday 11th September 2019 at Loughborough University.  

The Lecture on Digital Road Safety focused on the new great potential of data from several digital sources to efficiently support both safe driver behaviour and road safety decision making at all levels. 

The Focus Area Mobility & Transportation Systems of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) organised the International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport (mobil.TUM 2019) which took place with great success on 11-12 September 2019, in Munich, Germany. The theme of the conference was Transportation Systems of the Future. 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:

•   Shaping the mobility in university campuses throughout ICT solutions
•   How an unexpected event affects overall driving performance?

Since 55 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, including traffic accidents. This year the WRS 2019 (data 2012-2017) features more than 205 countries, with data on over 45 road related topics, with the active contribution of NTUA for the Greek data. There is highest response rate in years, covering more countries than ever before and a brand new design and layout. 

Reducing the road safety performance gap between EU Member States and offering high levels of safety on all European roads is one of the most important objectives of the European Commission in the area of transport. The EU Road Safety Exchange project wants to help reduce this gap through the exchange of knowledge and experience on effective road safety measures. The project will develop partnerships between road safety professionals in different European countries and help address their specific road safety challenges through twinning activities. On 9 October 2019, a high level event in Brussels marked the official launch of the project. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a short video explaining how alcohol interlock programmes in several European countries are helping to cut drink-driving. Ending drink-driving in the EU could prevent up to 5.000 deaths every year. 

A paper titled “Driving difficulties as reported by older drivers with mild cognitive impairment and without neurological impairment” authored by Sophia Vardaki, Anne E. Dickerson, Ion Beratis, George Yannis and Sokratis G. Papageorgiou is now published in Traffic Injury Prevention. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors determining driving difficulties as seen from the viewpoint of 30 older drivers with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 30 age-matched controls without cognitive impairment. The analysis revealed that 2 factors underlie MCI perceptions of driving difficulties, representing (1) difficulties associated with late detection combined with slowed response to relevant targets in the peripheral field of view and (2) difficulties associated with divided attention between tasks requiring switching from automatic to conscious processing particularly of long duration. 

The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) in collaboration with the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT/CERTH), organized a workshop entitled “Transport and Tourism” which took place with great success on Wednesday, September 4^th 2019, in Rhodes Island, under the auspices of the South Aegean Region. Through a dialogue between stakeholders of transport and tourism, the workshop explored how the transport sector can be promoted in relation to tourism (and vice-versa), so that the Greek touristic destinations can provide safe and high standard transport services and infrastructures, also taking advantage of the technological developments in the field.  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Tourism and Road Accidents in Greece

The City of Edmonton’s Traffic Safety section organized the 22nd International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety (ICADTS) Conference, which was held with great success in Edmonton, Canada, on 18-21 August 2019. This multi-disciplinary conference brought together experts from public health and road 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.