Road Safety Data
Road Safety Data concern the most recent tables and figures on road accidents, risk exposure and performance indicators in Greece and in Europe gathered from various Greek and International data sources like EC, ELSTAT, CARE, Eurostat, IRTAD, NTUA, etc.
Road Accident Data
Basic road safety figures 2010-2019 
Basic Road Fatalities Figures
Fatalities characteristics 1991-2018 
Fatalities by age and gender
Fatalities by age and road user type 2018 Fatalities by road type
Fatalities by area and road type 2018 Fatalities by road user type
Fatalities by accident type 2018
Fatalities by lighting conditions 2018
Fatalities by weather conditions 2018
Fatalities by transport mode 2018
Risk and Performance Indicators
Accident risk by driver’s characteristics Fatalities per population
Accident risk by vehicle characteristics Seat belt and helmet use in Europe
Seat belt use in Greece Drivers’ self-declared behaviour
Helmet use in Greece Drivers’ attitudes towards unsafe behaviour
Mobile phone use in Greece Drivers personal and social acceptability
Driver attitudes towards road safety
About the Greek road safety data About the EU road safety data
Together for Safer Roads (TSR), together with presenting sponsors UPS foundation and CalAmp, announced a vision zero technology fund to support fleet safety in essential services and purpose-based organizations. The fund will underwrite the adoption of lifesaving vehicle technologies and will assist in its implementation among essential service organizations’ fleet operations. 
The Horizon 2020 project HADRIAN published the HADRIAN Newsletter November 2020. The newsletter provides highlights from the technical work completed during the project’s first year, as well as plans for the following year which focus on translating the HADRIAN operational concept into concrete researchand development activities. NTUA actively contributed with a research titled “HADRIAN – Holistic Approach for Driver Role Integration and Automation Allocation for European Mobility Needs”.
The Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI) published a Paper titled “E-scooters in Europe: legal status, usage and safety“, which presents the legal status, usage and safety of e-scooters in 18 European countries. Many countries are working on more targeted or more elaborate legislation. The objective information about numbers, safety, users and their behaviour is scarce.
The Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI) published a Position Paper titled “Towards an evidence-based national road safety programme“. The paper intends to offer guidance to Member States on developing a national road safety programme. Its main message is that a road safety programme must be based on scientifically sound evidence in order to ensure that it focuses on the most relevant issues and implements the most appropriate treatments.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), recently released a Report titled “Global Trade in Used Vehicles“, which looks at 146 countries that import used vehicles, and calls for action to regulate the trade through the adoption of a set of harmonized minimum quality standards. These would ensure used vehicles contribute to cleaner and safer fleets in recipient countries. UNEP and partners will address these issues, initially with a project focused on Africa.
The fourth Newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project BeOpen (European forum and observatory for open science in transport) was recently released with all the past 6 months achievements, including activities and deliverables. The project’s goal is to progress beyond the state-of-the-art, developing an appropriate regulatory framework and policies to support innovation and deployment.
The Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards 2020 were recently presented by Prince Michael to Road Safety Organisations who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and innovation in improving road safety in Britain and world-wide. At this 30 years celebration, several of NTUA cooperating Organisations (The World Bank, iRAP, Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety, Agilysis) were among the awarded Organisations.
The Horizon 2020 project i-DREAMS recently released its 3rd Newsletter, presenting the main accomplishments of the project, through creative solutions and risk mitigation strategies. The project, focusing on the analysis of the Safety Tolerance Zone, is organised in 10 Work Packages. NTUA actively contributed in the analysis and the evaluation of WP6 (Analysis of risk factors) and WP7 (Evaluation of safety interventions).
The 4th ESRA2 Webinar took place with great success on 16 December 2020 including the NTUA presentation titled: “Moped drivers and Motorcyclists”. This presentation was based on the results of the ESRA2 Thematic Report titled “Moped drivers and motorcyclists” focusing on key PTW attitudes from a survey that collected data from more than 35,000 road users across 32 countries worldwide. Speeding, drink and drive, helmet use and mobile phone distraction as well as self-declared safety perception of using mopeds and motorcycles, were among the key issues highlighted.
The European Commission (DG Move) has recently developed the Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators, which is a set of practical and reliable indicators that support cities to perform a standardised evaluation of their mobility system and to measure improvements that result from new mobility practices or policies. Two out of the 18 mobility indicators concern key urban road safety indicators to be jointly considered within the new urban sustainable mobility policies. The complete set of indicators is now available
The complete set of indicators is now available 
The European Commission (DG Move) recently presented the EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy together with an Action Plan of 82 initiatives (several of which aim to promote and enhance road safety), which lay the foundation for how the EU transport system can achieve its green and digital transformation .
Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean said: “As the backbone that connects European citizens and business, transport matters to us all. Digital technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way we move, making our mobility smarter, more efficient, and also greener”.
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Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean said: “As the backbone that connects European citizens and business, transport matters to us all. Digital technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way we move, making our mobility smarter, more efficient, and also greener”.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has recently published a Report titled: Alcohol Interlocks in Europe: An Overview of Current and Forthcoming Programmes. This new Report aims at providing a more practical approach showing how each country has implemented their national scheme or intend to implement it in the future. It also identifies strengths and weaknesses to advocate for more effective measures and to inspire other Member States to deliver successful programmes.
The IRF Data Warehouse is a web-based global road data platform and warehouse that can complement and support national and regional efforts to collect and manage data. The IRF Data Warehouse also contributes to capacity-building and advocacy activities on a number of topics and in particular, road safety. The entire time series of the IRF World Road Statistics enables immediate and effective data analysis and is complemented by a series of dashboards and interactive data visualisation tools.
The World Road Association – PIARC published a Report titled “Prevention and Mitigation of Tunnel-Related Collisions”. This report presents and recommends possible organizational and technical measures one can implement to lower the probability or the mechanical consequences of tunnel related collisions, that is, collisions in which the specific characteristics of a tunnel play a role in either the cause or the effect.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed to support a EUR 470 million nationwide Scheme to reduce death and injury caused by traffic accidents across Greece. NTUA had contributed to the economic analysis of this major road safety scheme. Over the next three years, national road operator Egnatia Odos will improve road safety at 7,000+ of the most dangerous sites, located across 11 Regions of Greece. The small scale safety schemes will include installation of traffic barriers, provision of anti-skid surfaces and improved warning signs and markings on roads identified as high-risk.
Greek Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Kostas Karamanlis, stated that “improving road safety across Greece is a national priority and the EIB support will reduce significantly the risk of accidents at the Greek interurban road network”.
A paper titled “Economic Assessment of Road Infrastructure Safety Schemes in Greece Using Crash Prediction Methodology”, authored by G. Yannis, A. Dragomanovits, J. Roussou, D. Nikolaou, was presented at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 99th Annual Meeting, on January 2020. This research presents a case study for the economic assessment of road safety schemes in crash prone locations in selected rural highways in Greece, using crash prediction models from the AASHTO Highway Safety Manual. The analysis results demonstrate the high impact of this large Road Safety Scheme. 
A paper titled “Vulnerable road users: Cross-cultural perspectives on performance and attitudes“, authored by George Yannis, Dimitris Nikolaou, Alexandra Laiou, Yvonne Achermann Stürmer, Ilona Buttler, Dagmara Jankowska-Karpa is now published in the Journal of IATSS. The results of this paper indicate that crossing the road at places other than nearby pedestrian crossings, reading a text message or checking social media while walking on the streets, cycling and riding without wearing a helmet, and speeding on powered two-wheelers outside built-up areas but not on motorways/freeways were the most frequently reported self-declared behaviours in 32 countries. 
Basic characteristics of road fatalities in Greece for the period 1991-2018 are summarised in a comprehensive Table prepared by the NTUA Road Safety Observatory (data source: ELSTAT). Since 2008, there are approximately 850 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 (-68%) and outside built-up areas (-59%) is observed during the last decade. On the contrary, fatalities decrease during the last decade is quite limited (but important) for older drivers (-22%), moped riders (-34%), and at junctions inside built-up areas (-35%).
The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report: “Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety Report”, tracking progress in reducing the number of road traffic fatalities and serious injuries in cities since 2010. It presents traffic safety data collected in 48 cities participating in the ITF Safer City Streets network and compares urban with national road safety trends. It provides indicators for the risk of traffic death for different road user groups, thereby enhancing the evaluation, monitoring and benchmarking of road safety outcomes.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical factors for the identification of traffic safety events in urban areas” was recently presented by Foteini Bardi. According to the results, the random forest model proved to produce more reliable results predicting traffic safety events with a lower false alarm rate, when compared to binomial logistic regression. Moreover, factor analysis demonstrated that data representing one minute before the event can be described by speed, the deviation of the vehicle from the middle of the road and the distance from the right boundary line. Similarly, data during the event can be better described through speed and longitudinal and lateral acceleration.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical factors of the influence of mobile phone use on driving behavior, based on smartphones’ data” was recently presented by Sofia Akritidou. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to examine and model the critical factors of mobile phone use on driver behavior through the exploitation of data from smartphone sensors. The results revealed that the parameters affecting the use of mobile phone while driving are four, the percentage of driving duration with speed above the speed limit, distance driving, average deceleration, and average speed. For the general, urban and rural models, the average deceleration had the most significant impact, whereas for the highway model, distance was the most significant parameter.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical driving parameters affecting speeding using data from smartphones” was recently presented by Dimosthenis-Marios Tzoutzoulis. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to identify the critical driving parameters affecting speeding using data from smartphones. The results demonstrate that the number of harsh accelerations, the percentage of mobile use and the distance of the trip affect the speeding percentage and are correlated with the aggressive behavior of the drivers. Furthermore, increased average acceleration does not always lead to breaking speed limits. Finally, male drivers tend to drive faster in comparison with women.
The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Guide, which gives a precise assessment on the magnitude and complexity of road safety challenges faced by Low and Middle Income Countries and assists policy makers understand the road safety framework in context of their own country systems and performance. This valuable Guide responds to the critical need for collecting and documenting accurate road safety performance data.
The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Guide in order to assist a jurisdiction to determine the level of readiness to move to automated enforcement and -among others- aims in identifying the powerful practical value of Automated Enforcement in saving lives and reducing injuries and to identify also issues and criteria to be considered before commencing automated enforcement.
The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Report, highlighting examples of GRSF’s effective delivery of global road safety solutions for the period of 2017-2019, such as the Green Transport in Vietnam, the BIRGS in Colombia and the Road Safety Barrier in Nepal. Since the first volume of this publication, GRSF work has come to fruition in these years and has pushed significantly forward the road safety agenda.
The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published the Road Safety Annual Report 2020, which provides an overview of road safety performance for 42 IRTAD countries. Based on the latest data, the report describes recent road safety developments in these countries and compares their performance against the main road safety indicators. This year, a highly interesting special section on the impact of covid-19 pandemic on road accidents is added. NTUA has contributed to the detailed report for Greece.
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.
According to the EU road fatalities infographic of the NTUA Road Safety Observatory based on ETSC 2020 PIN Annual Report data, Sweden ranked first in 2019 with 22 fatalities/mil. inhabitants and 17th in terms of last decade reduction (-21%), whereas Romania ranked last, with 96 fatalities/mil. inhabitants and 22nd in terms of last decade reduction (-18%). 14 countries have a better performance than the EU average in terms of last decade road fatalities reduction, with Luxembourg and Greece sitting on top of the list with a reduction of more than 42% over the last decade.
According to the ELSTAT road accidents data for 2018 in Greece, 38% of road fatalities are passenger car occupants, whereas 31% of road fatalities are power two wheelers. Most car occupant fatalities occur outside built-up areas while most motorcycle and pedestrian fatalities occur inside built-up areas. Accident severity is five times higher outside built-up areas for all transport modes.
