NTUA Professor George Yannis was recently awarded the prestigious Francqui Chair 2019, as proposed by Hasselt University in Belgium. The Francqui Chair is awarded every year by the Francqui Foundation to eminent academics which are promoting the development of higher education and scientific research in Belgium. Prof. Yannis is going to give the inaugural lecture on 19 March 2019 focusing on: Road safety challenges in the digital era – Is digitalisation boosting road safety? 
Author: dpavlou
Road fatalities in Greece in 2018 presented, for second year in a row, a significant decrease (5.6%) compared to 2017 figures, according to recently published ELSTAT data. This significant decrease could be attributed not only to the fact that Greece is still under the effect of the economic crisis but also due to the fact that over the past two years, more than 500 km of new or upgraded motorways have replaced national roads with high road fatalities rates. 
During the last decade, Greece presents the most impressive road safety improvement in the European Union, with a decrease of road fatalities of 56% and a decrease of serious injuries of 60%. The rate fatalities per million vehicles has decreased by 59% since 2008.
A paper titled “Review and ranking of crash risk factors related to the road infrastructure” authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou, Ashleigh Filtness, Akis Theofilatos, Apostolis Ziakopoulos, Claire Quigley and George Yannis is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. This analysis was carried out within the SafetyCube project, which aimed to identify and quantify the effects of risk factors and measures related to behaviour, infrastructure or vehicles, and integrate the results in an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS). Synthesis of results was made through 39 ‘Synopses’ (including 4 original meta-analyses) on individual risk factors or groups of risk factors. This analysis allowed the ranking of infrastructure risk factors into three groups: risky (11 risk factors), probably risky (18 risk factors), and unclear (7 risk factors). 
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Prof. George Yannis made a presentation about “Open Science in Transport” at the kick-off meeting of the BeOpen, Horizon 2020 project, which took place in Brussels in 14 February 2019. 
BeOpen aims to create a common understanding on the practical impact of Open Science and to identify and put in place the mechanisms to make it a reality in transport research. Road Safety constitutes a major component of this Open Science in Transport initiative.
BeOpen aims to create a common understanding on the practical impact of Open Science and to identify and put in place the mechanisms to make it a reality in transport research. Road Safety constitutes a major component of this Open Science in Transport initiative.
The International Neuropsychological Society organised the 47th Annual Meeting which took place with great success in New York from February 20-23, 2019. The topics of the Meeting included clinical neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychiatry and internationally renowned, innovative, and pioneering scientists and clinicians from multiple disciplines gave very interesting presentations. NTUA actively contributed with the following interdisciplinary presentation merging two scientific domains – neuroscience and road safety:
The Saudi Arabia General Directorate of Traffic organized the Traffic Safety Conference (TSC 2019) which took place with great success in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 11-13 March 2019. The theme of the conference was “Enhancement of Traffic Safety” which is one of the main objectives of Saudi National Transformation Program 2020 and in line with Saudi Vision 2030: an ambitious Nation by reaching high standards in safe driving. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation: Traffic Safety in the European Union
Every year Republic of Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina), loses many valuable human lives and incurs enormous economic costs caused by road accidents. The Traffic Safety Agency of Republic of Srpska in cooperation with the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) are organizing the 8th International Conference Road Safety in Local Community, which will take place in Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska on 24-25 October 2019 aiming to constantly strengthen and develop capacities at the local level and create groups of road safety experts who will have enough enthusiasm, courage and will to fight with this problem facing the country. 
HUMANIST is organising “HUMANIST Summer School 2019“, which is going to be held in Lyon, France on 9-11 July 2019. The Humanist Summer School 2019 will provide good insight into research in the area of Human Factors issues linked to the autonomous car challenge. The Summer School is a meeting place for Young and Senior Researchers, PhD or Professionals and offers plenty of opportunities to interact.
The 4th Newsletter of the African-European Dialogue Platform on Road Safety (SaferAfrica) Horizons 2020 project has been recently issued with the active contribution of NTUA. This edition highlights the African “ownership” of the African Road Safety Observatory, Role for NGOs, SaferAfrica Thematic Factsheets and new resources.
The European Council reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on a proposal to strengthen road infrastructure management to reduce road fatalities and serious injuries. The reform will extend the scope of the current rules to motorways and other primary roads beyond the trans-European transport network (TEN-T). Furthermore, it introduces a network-wide road safety assessment, which is a snapshot of the entire road network covered by the Directive used to evaluate accident risk and the Authorities will use the findings to carry out more targeted road safety inspections or take direct remedial action. It will become mandatory to take systematic account of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users in road safety management procedures. The draft directive amending directive on road infrastructure safety management is available:
The 2019 Polis Conference will take place on 27 and 28 November 2019, in Brussels, Belgium, organised by POLIS, the European Cities Network, celebrating the network’s 30th anniversary. The conference will provide an opportunity for cities, metropolitan areas and regions to showcase their transport achievements to a large audience, and for the wider transport community to engage with representatives of local and regional authorities on innovative transport solutions.
The Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering Doboj, University of East Sarajevo, is organizing the 7th international conference New Horizons of Transport and Communications, which will be held on November 29-30, 2019 in Doboj, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, University of East Sarajevo. Conference attendees will have the chance to present their work on current traffic policy, sustainability and development strategy in the field of transport and traffic engineering, examples of good practice worldwide, solutions of respective problems in transport, scientific results, new models of technology and other achievements.
TRAVisions concerns two competitions for transport research awards to be announced in a prestigious award ceremony at the Transport Research Arena Conference on 27-30th April 2020 in Helsinki (abstract submission deadline: 30/06/2019): 
- TRAVisions 2020 Young Researcher Competition, an academic student competition with the goal of stimulating the interest among young researchers and students in the field of sustainable surface transport
- TRAVisions 2020 Senior Researcher Competition, a competition for senior researchers in the field of innovative surface transport concepts based on results only from EU-funded projects
The Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), launched the GRSF 2018 Annual Report, highlighting its excellent record of delivery and long term funding for road safety. GRSF is a global partnership program administered by the World Bank, which was established in 2006 with a mission to help address the growing crisis of road traffic deaths and injuries in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) is organizing the 8th International Symposium on Naturalistic Driving Research (NDRS 2019) which will be held in Melbourne, Australia on August 13-14, 2019. The 8th International Naturalistic Driving Research Symposium will provide 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.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 36th PIN Flash Report “Reducing Speeding in Europe“, with the active contribution of NTUA. The EU has the exclusive authority to set minimum safety standards for all new vehicles sold on the EU market. One of the main goals of this PIN Flash Report is to highlight the proposed standards which include mandatory fitment of overridable Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) on all cars, vans, buses and heavy goods vehicles. Research shows that this single technology could help to achieve a high level of compliance with speed limits and eventually cut road deaths by 20%.
The United States Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in cooperation with participating ESV member countries are organizing the 26th International Technical Conference on The Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV) which will take place in Eindhoven, Netherlands, on June 10-13, 2019. ESV provide opportunities to share innovative advances in motor vehicle safety and encourage international cooperation.
ERTRAC is organising the Annual Conference 2019: Road Transport Research towards “Horizon Europe” which will be held in Brussels, on 4 April 2019. The conference will be dedicated to the preparation of the 9th Research Framework Programme “Horizon Europe”: which place for Road Transport Research and which key research challenges? Three new Roadmaps will be presented and distributed: on “Connected Automated Driving“, on “Road Safety“, and on “Long Distance Freight Transport“. The event will include an exhibition showcasing some examples of innovation in the automotive and mobility sector.
The FEHRL Infrastructure Research Meeting 2019 (FIRM19) will take place on 26-28 March 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. The theme is “On-Ramp to innovation: Let’s co-create together our future transport infrastructure“ and it coincides with the celebration of the 30th anniversary of FEHRL. The main stakeholders (EC, CEDR, PIARC, ERTRAC, ECTP) are expected to outline the vision for the future cross-modal transport infrastructure and its implementation plan.
The 10th International Conference on the Prevention of Accidents at Work (WOS 2019) will take place in Vienna on 23-26 September 2019. The congress, focusing on the prevention of workplace accidents – WOS: Working on Safety – aims at bringing together experts from all over the world in order to facilitate a high-level exchange of experience, new findings and good practice solutions. The congress will be an excellent occasion for representatives of H&S organizations, labour inspectors, safety professionals, researchers, policy makers, labour administrators and other experts to broaden the personal prevention horizon and to get in touch with experts from other countries and other safety-cultures.
The Focus Area Mobility & Transportation Systems of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are organising the International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport (mobil.TUM 2019) which will take place on 11-12 September 2019, in Munich, Germany. The theme of the conference is Transportation Systems of the Future. Road safety will be 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.
The infographic of the 2018 NTUA Road Safety Observatory (www.nrso.ntua.gr) activities, highlights one more very intensive year, striving with highly scientific expertise to improve road safety in Greece, in Europe and worldwide. The nrso people with excellent dedication, efficiency and expertise were active in 22 innovative research projects, succeeded to publish 67 scientific papers (21 in peer reviewed journals), reached almost 100.000 nrso website page-views, handled more than 115.000 emails and run more than 4.800 km! 
Basic characteristics of road fatalities in Greece for the period 1991-2017 are summarised in a comprehensive Table prepared by the NTUA Road Safety Observatory (data source: ELSTAT). Since 2007, there are approximately 900 less road fatalities per year in Greece. According to these time series data a spectacular decrease in road fatalities for children 0-14 years old (-71%), young drivers (-61%) and on motorways (-61%) is observed during the last decade. On the contrary, fatalities decrease during the last decade is quite limited for moped riders (-26%), older drivers (-28%) and at rural (36%) and urban (37%) junctions. 
Emmanouil Barmpounakis, Panagiotis Papantoniou, Dimosthenis Pavlou, Dimitris Tselentis and Panos Georgiou PostDoc Researchers of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of NTUA were awarded with the NTUA Thomaidion Award for outstanding publications in scientific journals for the year 2016. The awards for publications in Scientific Journals concerned:
- Barmpounakis E., Vlahogianni E., Golias J., Vision-based multivariate statistical modeling for powered two-wheelers maneuverability during overtaking in urban arterials, Transportation Letters, 8:3, 167-176, 2016
- Yannis G., Laiou A., Papantoniou P., Gkartzonikas C., Simulation of texting impact on young drivers’ behavior and safety on motorways, Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 41-A, 10-18, 2016
- Pavlou D., Papantoniou P., Papadimitriou E., Vardaki S., Yannis G., Golias I., Papageorgiou S.G., Which are the effects of driver distraction and brain pathologies on reaction time and accident risk?, Advances in Transportation Studies, Vol.1, 83-98,2016
- Papadimitriou E., Lassarre S., Yannis G., Tselentis D., Road, traffic and human factors of pedestrian crossing behaviour: Integrated choice and latent variables models, Transportation Research Record 2586, 2016
- Christina Plati, Panos Georgiou and Andreas Loizos, Influence of different roller compaction modes on asphalt mix performance, International Journal of Pavement Engineering, 17:1, 64–70, 2016
A paper titled “Investigation of the effect of tourism on road crashes” authored by Vasileios Bellos, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, and George Yannis is now published in Journal of Transportation Safety & Security. Based on police data on road crashes in Greece for the 5-year period of 2011 to 2015, negative binomial regression models were developed, which led to the conclusion that tourists are more often involved in road crashes in Greece. Furthermore, the increase of the relative rate ratio of road crash involvement for foreign tourists in touristic regions indicates a clear increased accident risk of foreign tourists compared to Greek drivers.
The European Association of Operators of Toll Road Infrastructures (ASECAP), supported by the Hellenic Association of Toll Road Network (HELLASTRON), organised a Press Conference on Road Safety on the occasion of the EDWARD – European Day without a Road Death 2018, which took place with great success on September 19, 2018. The theme was “Modern motorways: Prevention and Road Safety in Europe and Greece” and Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said: “I am glad to see such an engaging and dedicated contribution of Greece to the third European Day Without A Road Death (EDWARD) taking place this year on 19 September during the European Mobility Week. Thank you GREECE and all involved!”.
NTUA Professor George Yannis presented recently the Global Road Safety Landscape at the Governing Board Meeting of the Private Sector Global Coalition Together for Safer Roads (TSR) composed by 16 leading global companies, highlighting the key challenges, perspectives and opportunities of global road safety.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a report titled “7 SMART Ways of tackling Drink-Driving in Europe”. The report aims to present the wide-ranging approaches used to tackle drink driving in Europe, including legislation (BAC limits, rehabilitation programmes for drink driving offenders), enforcement, technology (alcohol interlocks) campaigns and education.
The Road Safety Institute ‘Panos Mylonas’ with the support of the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) produced and implemented two video campaigns focusing on driver distraction due to mobile phone use: 
and one video campaign focusing on the importance of seat-belt especially at the back-seat, titled: “Seat-belt – The belt which “ties” us with life“: . The objective is to highlight these very crucial road safety risk factors and promote these campaigns through social media.
The Association for European Transport is organising the 47th European Transport Conference, which will take place in Dublin, Ireland, on 9-11 October 2019. The European Transport Conference (ETC) is the annual conference of the Association for European Transport. Each year the conference presents the opportunity to interact with a range of speakers across the Transport Industry, including several Road Safety Topics. The range of topics, the multi-seminar approach and the networking environment makes ETC unique among transport conferences, making it the established premier event of its type.
