A paper titled “Safety assessment of control design parameters through vehicle dynamics model” authored by Stergios Mavromatis, Alexandra Laiou, and George Yannis is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. An existing vehicle dynamics model was utilized to define design parameters up to which steady state cornering conditions apply and consequently lift the restrictions of the point mass model. Aiming to assess critical safety concerns in terms of vehicle skidding, the motion of a passenger car was examined over a range of design speed values paired with control design elements from AASHTO 2011 Design Guidelines as well as certain values of poor pavement friction coefficients.   For full text just ask us by replying to this email.

The European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) has published the “Safe Road Transport Roadmap – Towards Vision Zero: Roads without Victims”, with the active contribution of NTUA. The main objective of this ERTRAC roadmap is to provide a joint stakeholder view on the road safety research needs in Europe. The roadmap is based on the current state of the art and the identified challenges to reach the ambitious goals set for the EU. In this roadmap, ERTRAC proposes a set of eleven high priority road safety research and innovation needs, which should be implemented by providing ample room for citizens and road users themselves to engage.

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Report titled “Road Safety Priorities for the EU 2020-2030: Briefing for the European Parliamentary Elections”. This ETSC Report suggests additional legislation priorities over the period 2019-2024, concerning: a) the improvement of cyclists, pedestrians and powered two wheelers safety, b) automated and connected mobility, c) the reduction of serious injuries on EU roads, d) the efficient enforcement, e) the drug driving and f) the education and training (revision of the European Driving License Directive).  

The European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) published a Report titled: “Transport in the European Union: Current Trends and Issues“. The Report sets out the key trends and issues for the single European transport area, the development of a safe transport infrastructure network across EU countries, and the external costs of transport, accompanied with the respective country analyses. Special emphasis is given to the consequences of road accidents.  

The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report: “Road Safety in European Cities – Performance Indicators and Governance Solutions”. This reports benchmarks road safety performance for 72 urban areas, mostly in Europe, and illustrates governance solutions to improve urban road safety with case studies conducted in Lisbon (Portugal) and Riga (Latvia). The report proposes new road safety indicators to assess the level of risk for each mode of transport. It finds that a modal shift away from private motor vehicles could significantly enhance road safety in dense urban areas and deliver public health benefits associated with increased physical activity and improved air quality.  

According to the European Commission preliminary statistics, fewer people died on European roads in 2018 but more efforts are needed to make a big leap forward. In 2018, there were around 25.100 fatalities in road accidents in the EU 28. This is a decrease of 21% compared to 2010, and 1% compared to 2017. The EU countries with the best road safety results in 2018 were the United Kingdom (28 deaths/million inhabitants), Denmark (30/million), Ireland (31/million), and Sweden (32/million), whereas the best improvement since 2010 was demonstrated by Greece (-45%) and Lithuania (-43%). With an average of 49 road deaths per one million inhabitants, this confirms that European roads are by far the safest in the world, but it also shows that we are off track to reach our target of halving the number of road deaths by 2020. 

A paper titled “The European road safety decision support system on risks and measures” authored by the Horizons 2020 SafetyCube project team is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. The European Road Safety Decision Support System is an innovative system providing the available evidence on a broad range of road risks and possible countermeasures. This paper describes the scientific basis of the DSS. The structure underlying the DSS consists of (1) a taxonomy identifying risk factors and measures and linking them to each other, (2) a repository of studies, and (3) synopses summarizing the effects estimated in the literature for each risk factor and measure, and (4) an economic efficiency evaluation instrument (E3-calculator). 

FIA launched a brand new visualized tool-website with key figures on vision and its impact on road safety in 14 countries all over the world. It provides data regarding visual disorders population percentages of each country, vision legislation and driving license, minimum acuity for both eyes, minimum vision field etc. 

European Investment Bank and European Commission join forces to support investments in transport safety with special focus on roads. At the TEN-T and CEF Conference in Bucharest, the EU Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc together with Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Vazil Hudák launched the “Safer Transport Platform” to promote safety as a key element for transport investment and to provide easy access to technical and financial advice, in particular for road safety. The “Safer Transport Platform – Road Safety Advisory” is available via a dedicated website.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Combined impact of road and traffic characteristics on driver behavior using data from smartphones” was recently presented by Virginia Petraki. High resolution driving behavior data were collected using sensors of smartphones which were combined with traffic and road geometry characteristics and subsequently were depicted spatially using GIS. From the application of these models it is observed that in road segments there is an increase in the number of harsh events if average traffic volume per lane increases in the respective segments. Furthermore, in junctions as the average occupancy increases, there is an increase in harsh accelerations, and as average speed increases more harsh decelerations occur.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Correlation of driver behaviour and fuel consumption using data from smartphones” was recently presented by Eva Michelaraki. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is the correlation of driver behaviour and fuel consumption using data from smartphones. To achieve this objective, data collected from 17 drivers who participated at a naturalistic driving experiment for four months are analyzed. The results demonstrated that there was a remarkable reduction in fuel consumption, by improving the way participants were driving and also a smoother and a greener driver behavior was achieved. A stronger correlation has emerged between harsh accelerations and fuel consumption, but also speed, braking, smartphone usage while driving, driving at night and demographic features had a direct impact on fuel consumption.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Self-assessment and Road Behaviour” was recently presented by Mikaela Panagiotopoulou. The aim of the Diploma Thesis is to relate self-assessment and other characteristics of drivers with parameters of their road behavior. To achieve this goal, a pilot simulator experiment was conducted and a questionnaire was filled in a sample of 125 drivers. The application of the models revealed that the drivers who have positively self-assessed their driving abilities drive faster and showcase speedy reaction time. The drivers in general, evaluated realistically their driving skills with an exception when it came to the safety driving measures which were: keeping an adequate headway from the vehicle in front, accurately adjusting their speed on different driving conditions, maintaining speed limits.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Greek drivers’ attitudes towards aggressive driving” was recently presented by Aggeliki Stefatou. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is the investigation of the characteristics of driver aggressiveness in Greece via their perceptions on their own behavior and the behavior of other drivers. Specifically, within the framework of the SafeCulture survey, the answers of 302 car drivers and 201 two-wheeler drivers on 8 questions regarding speed, 6 questions regarding overtaking behavior and aggressiveness and 4 questions regarding alcohol consumption were analyzed. Results indicate that drivers do not perceive traditional crash factors as causes for their crash involvement. The only contributing factors perceived by drivers was found to be those involving driver overtaking behavior and aggressiveness.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Spatial analysis of driver safety behavior using data from smartphones” was recently presented by Ilias Parmaksizoglou. The aim of this diploma thesis is to conduct a spatial analysis of driver safety behavior using data from smartphones. Data were processed in a GIS computer environment, resulting to the creation of new tables describing the phenomena observed on the road map of the study (Leoforos Mesogeion) in node and link areas. Analytic maps were developed that aimed to indicate patterns of the accumulation and ranking of the harsh events in the selected road axis. Finally, four linear regression models were developed, which demonstrated speed as the most statistically significant factor in predicting harsh events per day on a region basis.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Impact of economic, social and transport indicators on road safety during the crisis period in Europe” was recently presented by Valentina Vassili. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate the impact of economic, social and transport indicators on road safety before and after the crisis period in Europe. For this analysis a database containing Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDP), motorway-kilometers per road network-kilometers, vehicle fleet per population and road fatalities for European states for 2000-2016 was developed.  The results led to the conclusion that Gross Domestic Index per capita has the most important impact and its increase leads to road fatalities decrease. Moreover, the increase of motorway-kilometers per road network positively affects the road fatalities decrease.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Identification of critical driving parameters affecting speeding using data from smartphones” was recently presented by Aris Kokkinakis. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to identify the critical driving parameters that affect speeding using data from smartphones. To achieve this objective, data collected from sixty- eight drivers who participated at a naturalistic driving experiment for fifteen months are analyzed. The analysis was carried out with the use of statistical method of linear regression. The results revealed that all six parameters, distance, high intensity harsh accelerations and brakings, harsh cornerings, average deceleration and mobile usage, were statistically significant in the regression models. For the general model, the number of high intensity harsh brakings had the most significant impact, whereas for each type of road separately, distance was the most significant parameter.  

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).   For full text just ask us by replying to this email.

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. 

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. 

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 European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Report titled “The Status of Traffic Safety and Mobility Education in Europe” with the active contribution of NTUA. Even though the overwhelming majority of European countries consider education as an essential part of the integrated approach to traffic safety, this first overview of traffic safety and mobility education in Europe demonstrates that in practice road safety education in schools at all levels is not sufficient. Only in the Czech Republic, Ireland and Germany is road safety education provided at all levels.  

NTUA Road Safety Research is ranked 2nd in Europe and 6th worldwide according to a recent study titled: “Visualization and analysis of mapping knowledge domain of road safety studies“, published at the leading safety Scientific Journal Accident Analysis and Prevention. Moreover, NTUA Prof. George Yannis appears to be among the most productive scientific authors worldwide in the field of road safety. This ranking is based on a systematic analysis of all road safety studies published on Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) between 2000 and 2018, containing several interesting performance indicators on road safety research worldwide (topics, trends, papers, journals, universities).   

A paper titled “Road safety behavior of drivers with neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions: an interdisciplinary Structural Equation Model analysis approach” authored by Dimosthenis Pavlou and George Yannis is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This research suggests the evaluation of driving behavior by using multiple driving indexes in a combined integrated manner, through a large-scale driving simulator experiment, comprising medical/neurological and neuropsychological assessments of 225 active drivers, and a set of driving tasks for different traffic volumes, different driving environments, including in-vehicle distraction conditions. The statistical analysis methodology developed and implemented was based on Principal Component Analysis and Structural Equation Models (SEMs). SEM results indicated that the impact of neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions is significantly detrimental on the latent variables “driving performance” and on the observed variables “reaction time” and “accident probability”. The AD group had the worse driving behavior profile among the examined groups with neurological diseases affecting cognitive functions. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a briefing synthesis titled “EU Strategy for Automated Mobility”. ETSC warmly welcomes and fully agree with the Commission’s acknowledgement that when it comes to automated mobility, “only the highest safety and security standards will suffice”. This must remain the guiding principle in the years to come. Automated driving has the potential to significantly improve road safety. However, recent collisions involving vehicles with automated technology on board demonstrate that automated driving may also pose new risks to road safety, and that the technology is not yet mature.  

The World Health Organisation (WHO) published an Interactive Map on Global Road Safety, based on the recently published Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018. This Interactive Map is a highly useful tool allowing to visualize a wealth of information and several road safety parameters per country as well as to highlight the shocking fact that every 23 seconds a road user looses their life. 

The Global Status Report on Road safety 2018 has been published by World Health Organisation (WHO) with the active contribution of NTUA, in December 2018, highlighting insufficient progress as the number of annual road traffic deaths has reached 1.35 million. Road traffic injuries are now the leading killer of people aged 5-29 years. The report suggests that the price paid for mobility is too high, especially because proven measures exist. These include strategies to address speed and drinking and driving, among other behaviours; safer infrastructure like dedicated lanes for cyclists and motorcyclists; improved vehicle standards such as those that mandate electronic stability control; and enhanced post-crash care. Drastic action is needed to put these measures in place to meet any future global target that might be set and save lives.  

• Infographic – Road traffic injuries; the facts 
• Data visualization – Death on the roads 
• Press release 

The African Road Safety Observatory is now on line constituting a space for interaction to highlight the road safety needs in African countries, developed with the active contribution of NTUA. It is one of the main results of the SaferAfrica project funded by the European Commission Horizons 2020 Programme and includes various knowledge and tools, such as statistics, reports, fact sheets, knowledge resources and links and it is integrated with crowd-sourcing functions to facilitate the participation of experts and end-users, through an interactive Dialogue Platform.