The International Transport Forum (ITF) organised with great success the  Safer Micromobility – Ask the Author session which was held online, on 17 April 2024. During this question and answer session, Philippe Crist (ITF) together with George Yannis and Virginia Petraki (NTUA) presented the findings of the latest ITF Report titled Safer Micromobility. According to this Report Micromobility is becoming safer (per miles driven), but an increase in severe injuries from e-scooter crashes is cause for concern and a comprehensive set of recommendations in line with the Safe System Approach are proposed.

•   Safer micromobility

The European Commission organised with great success the EU Road Safety Conference which was held in Dublin, Ireland, on 16 April 2024. The Conference provided an opportunity to engage with EU Member States Authorities, Experts and all Stakeholders across the road safety community. In addition, it facilitated exchanging views and experiences on the efforts to reach Vision Zero.   NTUA Professor George Yannis actively contributed with the following key-note presentation:

•   European Road Safety Observatory

The European Commission with the active contribution of NTUA, SWOV and KFV has published at the European Road Safety Observatory, the Main Factors causing Fatal Crashes Thematic Report, in which the role of key risk factors is quantified and discussed, based on the most recent international literature. These factors concern speeding, driving under the influence of alcohol, distraction and other psychoactive substances, and non-use of protective equipment. Addressing in priority the above causes of fatalities in Europe, through safe-by-design thinking, i.e. prevention, control and mitigation of the consequences of these errors, can contribute significantly towards the ambitious EU targets of halving fatalities by 2030 and eliminating them by 2050.  

The European Commission and the An Roinn Iompair (ARI) together with the European Transport Research Platforms ACARE, ALICE, CEDR, ECTP, ERRAC, ERTRAC, ETRA and Waterborne organised with great success the Transport Research Arena Conference (TRA2024) which took place in Dublin, Ireland, on 15-18 April 2024. The pillars of the Conference were the safe & inclusive transport, the sustainable mobility of people and goods, the efficient & resilient systems and the collaborative digitalisation regarding the European Transport Research and Innovation and the cooperation of Europe with other continents.   NTUA actively contributed with 35 innovative presentations:

•  European Road Safety Observatory
•   Road safety in Low- and Middle-Income Countries – Analysis and recommendations
•   Monitoring National Road Safety Strategies in the EU
•   Naturalistic Spatial Road Safety Analysis: The SmartMaps Project
•   Traffic simulation and safety assessment requirements for enhancing road safety prediction tools
•   Bicycle traffic analysis before and after mobility interventions using crowdsourced data
•   Assessing the Impact of Athens Great Walk on VRU Volumes: A Temporal Analysis
•   The HADRIAN Novel Human-Machine Interface Prototype for Automated Driving: Safety and Impact Assessment
•   Safety evaluation via conflict classification during automated shuttle bus service operations
•   Outcome Evaluation of i-Dreams (H2020 Project) Interventions: Comparison of Multi-Country Driving Behavior
•   Unveiling driving behaviour patterns during a naturalistic driving experiment
•   Investigating the effect of driver-vehicle-environment interaction with risk through naturalistic driving data
•   Predicting risky driving behavior with classification algorithms: Results from a large-scale filed-trial and simulator experiment
•   Unfolding the dynamics of driving behavior: A machine learning analysis from Germany and Belgium
•   Investigating the Influence of Mobile Phone Use on Driving Behaviour with Machine Learning Analysis
•   Exploitation of naturalistic driving data to estimate crash risk through machine learning techniques
•   Examining the influence of traffic enforcement on the development of traffic safety culture
•   Analyzing Acceptance of Reduced Speed Limits on Greek Motorways
•   Economic Assessment of Free Public Transport in Athens
•   Examining the impact of driver distraction on speeding through the exploitation of smartphone sensor data
•   Impact assessment of governance models on the integration of connected and autonomous vehicles
•   Assessing the Readiness of European Cities for Distributed Traffic Management: A Smart Infrastructure Readiness Index
•   Does Eco-Routing Even Work? Some Experimental Findings
•   Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to Prioritize Network Benefits When Applying Novel Traffic Management Strategies
•   Comparing Random Forests and Multinomial Logit Models for Urban Travel Choice under Innovative Traffic Management Strategies
• E-Survey of Road Users’ Attitudes
• Optimising driver behaviour for safe, green and energy efficient mobility
• Injury Mitigation to Promote Vision-Zero Achievement
• CulturalRoad: Cultural, regional and societal factors to overcome barriers to connected, cooperative and automated mobility deployment
•  SHOW simulation suite: A guide for simulating shared automated mobility
• metaCCAZE – Flexibly adapted MetaInnovations, use cases, collaborative business and governance models to accelerate shared Zero Emission mobility for passengers and freight
• Flexibly adapted MetaInnovations, use cases, collaborative business and governance models to accelerate shared Zero Emission mobility for passengers and freight
• Artificial Intelligence for Vision Zero in Road Safety
• Integration of road user behavior models to traffic safety analytic tools
•  Artificial Intelligence boosting Road Safety

The Road Traffic Safety Agency (RTSA) of the Republic of Serbia in cooperation with several Serbian and international road safety Governmental, Academic and other organizations, organised with great success the 19th International Conference Road Safety in Local Communities (RSCL 2024) in Zlatibor, Serbia, on 17-20 April 2024. The Conference was organized within second Decade of Action for Road Safety (2021-2030) and the second national strategy for road safety (2023-2030) highlighting the significant changes in road safety regulations.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:

•  Benefits from city-wide 30km/h speed limit

The International Road Traffic Safety Analysis and Data (IRTAD) Group and of the International Transport Forum (ITF) organised with great success the 37th Meeting which was held in Helsinki and online, on 10-11 April 2024. In this meeting, the latest international road safety developments were discussed. 80 members and observers from more than 40 countries enriched the discussion aimed to help improve road safety across the globe. Particular emphasis was given to safer micromobility and the evaluation of road safety measures. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:

•  Safer Micromobility
•  The EU Methodology for Network Wide Road Safety Assessment

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Knowledge Report titled Improving Road Traffic Injury Statistics in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. This Report identifies the reasons behind statistical discrepancies between Low- and Middle-Income Countries and outlines strategies to strengthen modeling efforts. Furthermore, in this Report key findings and recommendations for more accurate reporting of traffic injuries were included.  

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Knowledge Report titled Estimating the Disability Burden of Road Traffic Injuries. This Report provides valuable insights into the prevalence, causes, and long-term impacts of crash-related disabilities. By broadening the discussion beyond fatalities to the often-overlooked issue of disability, the report paves the way for a more holistic perspective on road safety impacts, which can inform more effective road safety policies.  

The Centro Nazionale per Mobilità Sostenibile (MOST) in cooperation with Politecnico of Milano organised with great success the G7 Transport Academic Workshop, which was held in Milan, on 10 April 2024. This workshop with theme “Planning for Resilient Transport Systems” consisted of 4 sessions, including issues related to road safety, such as principles and measures for network resilience, decision-making and trade-offs and policies and practices for mitigation and adaptation. The Workshop results were presented to the Meeting of the Ministers of the G7 world’s advanced economies.  NTUA Professor George Yannis actively contributed with the following presentation:

•   The role of digitalisation in preventive transport resilience policies

 

The new EU road fatalities by age and gender  table of the NTUA Road Safety Observatory, based on European Commission CARE data for 2022, provides an overall view of the distribution of fatalities between the different age groups and genders.  It can be clearly observed that far more males than females are killed in road crashes in all EU countries. Furthermore, most road fatalities occurred within the 65+ age group, while the lowest rates are recorded for children under 15 years old. 

The European Commission with the active contribution of NTUA, SWOV and KFV has published at the European Road Safety Observatory, the Subjective Safety Safety Performance Indicator (SPI) Report which  focuses on the subjective experience of feeling safe or unsafe in road traffic using different transport modes. Based on data from the ESRA project it is shown that road users feel safer in order importance as: pedestrians (6.7-8.8), car drivers (5.9-8.3), cyclists (4.5-7.3) and motorcyclists (4.5-6.5).  

Dimitris Nikolaou has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled: Machine learning-based road crash risk assessment fusing infrastructure, traffic and driver behaviour data, under the supervision of NTUA Prof. George Yannis. Two distinct databases were developed; the former concerned motorway segments and the latter concerned urban and interurban road segments. Several statistical models (e.g. Logistic and Negative Binomial Regression, Hierarchical Clustering, Spatial Error Model) and Machine Learning Algorithms (e.g. Decision Tree, Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbour and Support Vector Machine) were implemented. The results revealed that crash frequency on motorway segments is positively correlated with the traffic volume, the segment length, the number of harsh accelerations and the number of harsh brakings per segment trips. It was also concluded that geometrical and behavioural parameters can be combined to meaningfully conduct road safety analysis spatially and proactively, as they are highly correlated with harsh braking Surrogate Safety Measures.  

The European Association of Operators of Toll Road Infrastructures (ASECAP), supported by the Associazone Italiana Societa Concessionarie Autostrade e Trafori (AISCAT), is organising the 51st ASECAP Study & information days conference, which will be held in Milan, on 13-15 May 2024. This conference with theme “Innovation as a key tool to reach safe, inclusive and green mobility solutions” will focus on how to provide equal access to mobility services being a key point for social and economic developments. 

A paper titled “RSS2022 Conference: Advanced Road Safety Analyses” authored by George Yannis and Eleonora Papadimitriou has been published in Safety Science. This collection reflects a concerted effort to advance scientific knowledge in road safety, aiming to mitigate crash fatalities and injuries in the digital era through innovative quantitative research methods. 

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Model for the assessment of cycling routes in Athens with high resolution data” was recently presented by Aristeidis-Vasileios Kanakis. For this purpose, the critical factors that influence the cycling trips carried out in the areas of Chalandri and Vrilissia, utilizing crowdsourced data from the “Strava Metro” platform, were identified. The results demonstrate a positive effect of the average speed of cycling on the number of cycling trips. The most critical influencing factors on cycling trips concern road infrastructure and traffic conditions on each road section, such as the average speed of cycling trips, the category of road section and its length.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “The influence of the penetration of autonomous vehicles on road safety” was recently presented by Antonia Antonakaki.  For this purpose, an analysis of simulation data was carried out around the Villaverde network in Madrid.  The application of the models revealed that the factors influencing the above variables have to do with both traffic composition data (vehicle type) and road infrastructure data (road type, road capacity). It is highlighted that increasing the Market Penetration Rate (MPR) of autonomous vehicles in the network was found to have, quantifiable positive effects on road safety.    

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Investigation of employee preferences in Athens towards the “Bike to Work” scheme” was recently presented by Konstantinos Aggelakis.  In order to achieve this,  factors influencing the decisions of workers to use a soft mode of transportation such as bicycles and scooters (electric or conventional) for their commutes in Athens are examined, as well as how the existence of a bicycle lane network affects this decision. Polynomial models demonstrate that increased time and cost savings in commuting do not significantly affect the choice of bicycle or scooter as a commuting mode, contrary to health improvement, while commute duration and commuter age are also significant factors in the choice of micro-mobility modes.  

AMRKS and Tempulli Academy  are co-organising the 10th International Conference “AI – Cyber Security and Road Safety” which will be held in Prishtina, on 7 May 2024. In this conference, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be discussed, as an important potential in increasing road safety. IA’s road safety and mobility initiative aims to increase road safety using innovative technologies to complement the action plans of the UN General Assembly Resolution on improving global road safety. 

The World Road Association (PIARC) recently published a Report titled “PIARC Global Road Safety Exchange“ with emphassis on Low and Middle Income countries, with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report reflects the wealth of information contained in PIARC multi-annual road safety work about safe infrastructure, the design and operation of road tunnels, speed management, the collection and analysis of road safety data, management, human behaviour, vulnerable road users and vehicles. PIARC recommendations will help to develop expertise in road safety and to adopt the «Safe System Approach» to reducing fatal and serious crashes on the road network worldwide.