A paper titled “Structural equation model analysis for the evaluation of overall driving performance: A driving simulator study focusing on driver distraction” authored by Panagiotis Papantoniou is now published in Traffic Injury Prevention, Volume 19, 2018 – Issue 3, pp. 317-325. 95 participants from all age groups were asked to drive under different types of distraction (conversation with passenger, cell phone use) in urban and rural road environments with low and high traffic volume in a driving simulator experiment. Then, a structural equation model is developed in which overall driving performance is estimated as a latent variable based on several individual driving simulator measures. The implementation of the structural equation model allows for the assessment of driving behaviour in terms of overall performance and not through individual performance measures, which allows an important scientific step forward from piecemeal analyses to a sound combined analysis of the interrelationship between several risk factors and overall driving performance.. 

The International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) organised by the International Transport Forum (ITF) a meeting which took place in Paris, on 5-6 April 2018 

NTUA presentations concerned:

• SafetyCube – the European Road Safety Decision Support System
• Update on the SaferAfrica project
•  Challenges for measuring risk exposure data in Ireland: Exploring new approaches with stakeholders

The Department of Methodology in the Behavioural Sciences of the University of Valencia organised the CAMP-sUmp University Campus Sustainable Mobility Conference, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund of the Interreg MED Programme in Valencia, Spain, on 27 March 2018. Designed to improve sustainable mobility in the Mediterranean area universities’ campus, CAMP-sUmp promotes the advancement of low-carbon strategies and energy efficiency within safe and efficient transport policies. At the CAMP-sUmp Conference the Action Plans and the related Road Maps were presented aiming to support Universities to improve their sustainable mobility plans with emphasis on traffic safety. Presentations were given by the CAMP-sUmp Universities: Catanzaro, Athens, Valencia, Cyprus, Split, Malta and Bologna. 

A Diploma Thesis titled “Development of an Optimization Model of Resource Allocation for the Management of Urban Transport Buses” was presented by Ilias Laios in March 2018, aiming to estimate the optimal allocation of the financial resources of the Athens Urban Transport Organization aiming for the most desirable result of the more efficient replacement of bus fleet. A mathematical optimization model based on the principles of linear integer programming was developed and implemented to achieve the goal. The greatest reduction in the cost of bus fleet management results from favorable conditions for the purchase of innovative and more efficient types of buses, such as electric buses and compressed natural gas buses.  

The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) launched a publication titled “Securing safe roads: the politics of change” which is an output of the project: The politics of road safety. Over the past 10 years, road safety has been escalated to an issue of international concern. Together with the World Resources Institute Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, ODI undertook research in three middle-income cities: Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; and Bogotá, Colombia. In this report, ODI synthesizes the findings from these case studies concluding with a series of strategies to improve road safety.  

POLIS, the European cities and regions network for innovative transport solutions released a discussion paper entitled: “Road Vehicle Automation and Cities and Regions”. Polis promotes the discussion about vehicle automation, focusing on the car as opposed to lorries and buses and on ‘personal mobility’ rather than logistics. The aims of this paper are among others: a) to raise awareness of AV developments and their potential mobility and safety impact among city and regional administrations and to assist them in setting transport policies and plans to deal with them and b) to raise awareness of city and regional transport policies among vehicle manufacturers and other automated vehicle players.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Analysis of the impact of autonomous vehicles to travel behaviour” was presented by Panagiotis Papalymperis in March 2018, aiming to analyse the effect of autonomous vehicles on the mobility behaviour as well as to identify the main characteristics that affect this behaviour. For this purpose, data collected from 235 travelers who participated in a stated-preference survey with a questionnaire were analyzed. Through the multinomial and binary regression models the impact of cost, time and safety on the choice of an autonomous vehicle or of a shared-use autonomous vehicle were examined.  

The International Road Traffic and Accident Group (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report “Speed and Crash Risk”, with the active contribution of NTUA. After reviewing the current knowledge on the relationship between speed and crash risk, this report analyses eleven cases from ten countries that have recently changed speed limits or introduced a large-scale automatic speed control. The analysis confirms the very strong relationship between speed and crash risk and that higher speed is associated with increased occurrence and severity of road crashes.  

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Position Paper titled “EU Funds for Road Safety in the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027“. In this paper, ETSC presents recommendations for funding for road safety initiatives within the next long-term EU budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). These recommendations should support work towards meeting the EU’s current target to reduce road deaths by 50% by 2020 and the new targets for 2030 as well as the long-term Vision Zero.  

A paper titled “Driving in Mild Cognitive Impairment: the role of depressive symptoms” authored by Ion N. Beratis, Nikos Andronas, Dionysia Kontaxopoulou, Stella Fragkiadaki, Dimosthenis Pavlou, John Papatriantafyllou, Alexandra Economou, George Yannis and Sokratis G. Papageorgiou is now published in Traffic Injury Prevention. Previous studies indicate a negative association between depression and driving fitness in the general population. This paper aimed to cover a gap in the literature and to explore the link between depressive symptoms and driving behavior in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) through the use of a driving simulator experiment. Results indicated that depressive symptoms could be a factor explaining why certain patients with MCI present altered driving skills. Therefore, interventions for treating the depressive symptoms of individuals with MCI could prove to be beneficial regarding their driving performance. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Position Paper titled “5th EU Road Safety Action Programme 2020-2030”. 2016 was the third consecutive poor year for road safety: 25,670 people lost their lives on EU roads compared to 26,200 the previous year. But this followed a 1% increase in 2015 and stagnation in 2014. In addition, around 135,000 people were seriously injured on European roads in 2014 according to European Commission estimates.

ETSC has identified nine main priorities for action with the top three outlined in the Executive Summary: vulnerable road user safety, automation and reducing the numbers seriously injured on Europe’s roads. A new, EU-level road transport agency could be critically important to planning and delivering new measures as well as providing regulatory oversight of the increasingly complex vehicle type approval that will be required to deal with increased automation.  

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Position Paper titled “Proposed changes to the driving and resting time rules and tachographs”. Amending Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 as regards on minimum requirements on maximum daily and weekly driving times, minimum breaks and daily and weekly rest periods and Regulation (EU) 165/2014 as regards positioning by means of tachographs ETSC welcomes the European Commission’s proposals on driving and resting times and the opportunity they give to improve road safety in the professional transport sector. While ETSC appreciates the rationale behind the proposals, it is crucial that any changes do not compromise the safety of those working in the professional transport sector, and by extension, other people using the road network. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 34th PIN Flash Report “New EU vehicle safety standards essential to reducing child road deaths“. More than 8,000 children aged 0-14 years have been killed in road traffic collisions over the last ten years in the European Union, new data show. Half of the children killed were travelling in cars, a third were walking and 13% were cycling. ETSC says that measures that can reduce speeding are critical to preventing the deaths of more children and is calling for the EU to require vehicle safety technologies such as Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) and Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) that can detect pedestrians and cyclists to be fitted as standard on all new cars. 

Jean Todt, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety stated that: SafeFITS provides a tool to help Member States review their current road safety situation and priorities, assisting them to determine the most appropriate and beneficial policy options for their national context, under the framework of the Decade of Action for Road Safety.

The 2018 Polis Conference on “Transport innovation for sustainable cities and regions” will take place on 22 and 23 November 2018, in Manchester, UK, organised by POLIS, the European Cities Network. 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 International Road Traffic and Accident Group (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report, with the active contribution of NTUA, which examines how improving insights regarding the real number of alcohol-related road casualties worldwide can help to save lives.  A total of 45 countries were surveyed with the help of an online questionnaire, and insightful statistics are presented in this Report.  

A paper titled “Simulation based safety margin assessment on speed variation between tangent to curved road alignment” authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou, Stergios Mavromatis, Dimosthenis Pavlou and George Yannis is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This paper investigates the safety margins of drivers along tangent to curved road sections. A vehicle dynamics model is presented, allowing to assess the vehicle speed variation at impending skid conditions from tangent to curve on the basis of several parameters. The results suggest that drivers’ safety margins towards the examined curve are considerable, with the majority of the drivers using less than 55% of the available vehicle horse power. Higher initial speed was positively correlated with driving efficiency i.e. lower safety margins. On the contrary, a higher safety margin was associated with earlier deceleration before the curve. 

Road safety is a major issue in Latin America and substantial actions are needed to reduce the number of road deaths and injuries. The International Transport Forum (ITF) released a report which describes and benchmarks road safety management and performance in ten Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay. The comparisons in this study allow identifying similarities and differences between countries’ road safety performance. It will be useful to policy makers in assessing weaknesses and strengths, and designing effective road safety policies that make use of the experiences in other countries.  

e-Drive Academy is an Innovative Educational e-platform for Safe, Smart, Ecological Transport and Driving, developed and operated by the General Directorate of Road Safety of the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks. e-Drive Academy provides all necessary educational services in order to develop an improved road safety culture and safe travelling for all road users, regardless of age, education or economic level. It aims to raise awareness of road users to adapt their behaviour to safer everyday travelling, with particular emphasis on consolidation of road safety issues and traffic safety education of children and preparing them as the responsible drivers of tomorrow. e-Drive Academy introduces for the first time the systematic teaching of Traffic Behaviour and Road Safety in Greek Primary Schools which start within 2018.   

World Resources Institute (WRI) Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and the Global Road Safety Facility of the World Bank in their publication titled “Sustainable and Safe: A Vision and Guidance for Zero Road Deaths” indicated that the most effective way to prevent traffic deaths is a systemic approach that shifts responsibility away from the drivers and pedestrians using roads to the city planners and officials designing them.  

The World Bank launched a publication titled: “The high toll of traffic injuries – Unacceptable and Preventable“, in which a comprehensive methodology is proposed in order to quantify both the income growth and social welfare benefits that safer roads could bring to developing countries. The analysis is based on data collected from 135 countries over 24 years, and demonstrated that reducing the number of road traffic injuries in developing countries not only increases income growth, but also generates substantial welfare benefits to societies.   

The European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) published the Final Report of “The implementation of Directive 2006/126/EC on driving licences”, with the active contribution of NTUA. The third Directive on driving licences entered into force in January 2013 and provides harmonized rules aimed at enhancing drivers’ freedom to move, reducing the possibility of driving licence fraud and improving road safety in the EU. This Study explores the implementation of the third Directive on driving licences four years after implementation and assesses whether the introduced novelties contributed to achieving the objectives set by the Directive.   

A paper titled “Accident Prediction Modelling: a literature review” authored by Tassos Dragomanovits, George Yannis, Alexandra Laiou, Francesca La Torre, Lorenzo Domenichini, Thomas Richter, Stephan Ruhl, Daniel Graham, and Niovi Karathodorou, is now published in the themed issue on transport safety and assessment of the Proceedings of ICE – Transport. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on road traffic Accident Prediction Models (APMs) and Crash Modification Factors (CMFs). The focus is on motorways and higher ranked rural roads and the study was performed within the PRACT research project carried out for the European Road Authorities Organistion (CEDR). The review of CMFs focused on their background and development, the various methods for developing them and the key issues in their application. The review resulted in the development of an online APM and CMF Repository, with the aim of assisting the practical application of gathered experience on accident prediction. 

A Diploma Thesis titled “The impact of nighttime driving to driver behavior and safety in cities with the use of driving simulator” was presented by Armira Kontaxi in November 2017. An experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out and regression statistical models were developed to investigate the impact of nighttime driving on the mean speed, on the standard deviation of the mean headway distance and on the mean reaction time and accident probability. The models’ application demonstrated that nighttime driving in urban area leads to an increase of the mean speed, of the standard deviation of the mean headway distance and of the mean reaction time, resulting thus to a significant increase of the accident probability.  

The Transport Research and Innovation Monitoring and Information System – TRIMIS is an online platform for researchers to share and discuss innovation in mobility in Europe. It is an evolution of the Transport Research & Innovation Portal (TRIP), and incorporates TRIP’s database of over 10,000 EU and national transport research projects. TRIMIS monitors the implementation and effectiveness of the roadmaps developed by the Strategic Transport Research and Innovation Agenda (STRIA). TRIMIS analyses technology trends, research and innovation capacities and developments in the European transport sector, providing open-access information. 

A Diploma Thesis titled “Analysis of the impact of nighttime driving to young drivers’ behavior and safety in rural roads with the use of driving simulator” was presented by Eleftheria Kyriakouli in November 2017 aiming to analyze the impact of nighttime driving on driver behavior and safety in rural areas through a driving simulator experiment. Regression models were developed to analyze the impact of driving at night on the mean speed, on the mean headway distance of the vehicle and the mean reaction time and on the probability of causing an accident. The models’ application demonstrated that nighttime driving leads to small decrease of the mean speed and increase of the mean headway distance of the vehicle, which however cannot outweigh the increase of the mean reaction time in case of an accident and therefore resulting to an increase of accident probability.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Investigation of the effect of tourism on road accidents” was presented by Vasileios Bellos in November 2017. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate the effect of tourism on road accidents. For this purpose, data on road accidents in Greece for the five-year period of 2011-2015 were collected. Negative binomial regression models were developed and it was observed that both the tourist season and tourism as travelling purpose led to an increase in road accidents, with the highest increase being observed in tourist regions. The increase of the relative rate ratio of road accident involvement for foreign tourists in tourist regions may indicate the increased risk of foreign tourists compared to Greek drivers.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Investigation of the impact of weather conditions to young drivers’ behavior and safety in cities with the use of driving simulator” was presented by Maria Chaireti in November 2017 aiming to investigate the impact of weather conditions on young drivers’ behavior and safety in urban areas. In order to achieve this objective, an experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out and regression models were developed to investigate the impact of weather conditions on the mean speed, the lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderline and the accident probability. The models’ application indicated that driving in the rain contributes to a small reduction in speed, but also to a significant increase in the probability of an accident. When driving in fog, drivers seem to be more cautious, as the lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderlines reduced and the probability of an accident decreased.