The Aegean University organised the international symposium for Road Safety – European Reality and Perspectives: A New Interdisciplinary Approach. The conference took place in Chios and its duration was 24-25 September. NTUA presented ‘Driver distraction and Road Safety in Greece and internationally’. 

The report “Research Projects and Studies 2001-2008“, published by the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport of the European Commission, is a backround document for the preparation of the strategic guidelines for road safety up to 2020. The report highlights challenges and opportunities in road safety research in Europe, describing the contribution from the European Community’s Research Framework Programmes as well as from other research activities at European level and their impact on road transport safety sector. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) with the contribution of NTUA released the Manual on Road Traffic Injury Data Collection Systems, which emphasizes on the way to collect road safety data in each country in order to be useful for informing road safety practice. Reliable and accurate data are also needed to correctly identify problems, risk factors and priority areas, and to formulate strategy, set targets and monitor performance. Ongoing, data-led diagnosis and management of the leading road traffic injury problems enables appropriate action and resource allocation. 

Road design has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Many of the basic principles for good road design were developed up to 40 years ago, and are still valid today. Although further refinements have been explored since then, there still remains uncertainty about relationships associated with design details and recent engineering innovations. Road infrastructure should be designed taking account of the same injury tolerance criteria as those developed for vehicle occupant protection and pedestrian impacts, so that roads and vehicles together provide an effective safety system.

The New Road Code as revised by the Revising Committee of the Hellenic Ministry of Transport has been voted by the Parliament and it is in force.  

In May 2009, CEDR published a report titled ‘Traffic incident management’. Good incident management is an important goal for all concerned with the management and safe operation of road networks. Research indicates that non-injury incidents contribute substantially to incident-related congestion. The most powerful tool in minimising the impact of incidents is the provision of fast, direct, high-quality information in a standard format that is acceptable across Europe.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched the Road Safety Legislation Database, containing information on legislation around a number of risk factors for road traffic injuries – speed limits, seat belt and child restraint use, helmet use, blood alcohol limits, daytime running lamps, mobile phone use.

The second IN-SAFETY workshop took place in Brussels in October 2007. The overriding objective of the workshop was to gather the views of the audience on the near-final results of the IN-SAFETY project. This provided an overview of the pilot tests undertaken in a real traffic environment in Athens, Turin and Stuttgart and in a driving simulator in Sweden.  

In October 2007, ETSC published the PIN Flash. Some 39,200 people were killed on EU roads in 2006. An annual reduction of at least 7.4% is needed to halve road deaths between 2001 and 2010. Up to 2006 however, the European Union’s yearly reduction in road deaths is only 4.9% on average. 

A research titled ‘Effects of driver nationality and road characteristics on accident fault risk’ co-authored G. Yannis, J. Golias and E. Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion in September 2007. Data from the national accident database of Greece were used to calculate accident relative fault risk rates under induced exposure assumptions. A log-linear analysis was then used to examine first- and higher-order effects within three or more variable groups. Results clearly indicate that foreign drivers in Greece are at increased risk. 

The European Union Road Federation (ERF), the Brussels programme of the International Road Federation (IRF), issued a discussion paper highlighting all aspects of Safety on Motorway Workzones, containing not only analyses but also best practices, proposals for all stakeholders and complete references to existing work in the field.

A research titled ‘Road Safety in Greece’ authored by G.Yannis from NTUA, was published in September 2007 in the Journal of IATSS. Basic characteristics such as population, road network length and development of the car ownership for the last ten years, road accident and casualty trends are presented. Moreover, the trends related to the enforcement of driving infringements related to road safety are presented. Road accident characteristics by road user characteristics and area type as well as road accident risk rates by vehicle type, age and gender of the driver and vehicle type and area type are finally presented.

The World Road Association (PIARC) presented recently the Guidelines for Road Accident Investigation for Road Engineers, aiming to assist road engineers detect the road infrastructure deficiencies that influence an accident’s occurrence, and to guide them in the implementation of appropriate improvement measures.  

A research titled ‘Accident risk of foreign drivers in various road environments’ co-authored by G.Yannis, J.Gollias and E.Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the Journal of Safety Research in 2007. Data from the national accident database of Greece are used in a hierarchical log-linear analysis. Results confirm that foreign drivers in Greece are at increased risk. However, immigrant permanent residents appear to have a lower risk compared to tourists, regardless of the road environment. 

The 3rd IRTAD Seminar took place in Brno – Czech Republic in November 2006.

NTUA presented:

Building the European Road Safety Observatory – SafetyNet

  A comprehensive set of road safety basic statistics

  Enhancement and exploitation of the existing European road accident data