Road Safety Knowledge
Road Safety Knowledge concerns published scientific papers, conference presentations, research results, technical reports, as well as syntheses, manuals and guidelines attempting to shed light into several contemporary road safety issues.
Road Design
Road interventions
Signing
Lighting
Equipment
Workzones
Junctions
Urban safety
Rural roads
Motorways
Traffic
Weather
Impact assessment
Audit & inspection
High risk sites
Safety assessment
e-safety
Safety equipment
Vehicle Inspection
Culture
Strategy
Measures
International comparisons
Data analysis
Accident severity
Driving Simulator
Naturalistic Driving
Measures Assessment
Social cost
Post impact care
Work related safety
Τhe European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) together with the Flemish Foundation for Traffic Knowledge (VSV) and Fundación MAPFRE have recently published the LEARN! Manual envisaged as a starting point for those who design, test, implement and evaluate educational activities on traffic safety and mobility, and are embarking upon the creation of new, or updating existing, activities. The new resource should also be useful to Ministries, Authorities, Schools and Organisations when deciding on which activities and projects to buy or fund. 
The Australasian College of Road Safety (ACRS) has recently published the Journal of Road Safety, May 2021 Edition. The JRS accepts papers from all countries and regions around the world and publishes a diverse range of high-quality papers on road safety from researchers, policy makers, program implementers and other road safety experts, providing anyone interested in road safety with a rich source of current knowledge, evidence, developments and best practice in road safety implementation.
A paper titled “To cross or not to cross? Review and meta-analysis of pedestrian gap acceptance decisions at midblock street crossings” authored by Athanasios Theofilatos, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Oscar Oviedo-Trespaliacios and Andrew Timmis was recently published by the Journal of Transport & Health. The paper explores pedestrian gap acceptance decisions in urban midblock locations. Fixed effects and random-effects meta-analyses are used to investigate the overall effect of critical variables. Results indicate that a unit increase in vehicle speed decreases pedestrians’ odds of crossing by 10%, while a unit increase in temporal gap size increases the odds of crossing by 7.2 times. Each crossing attempt increases the odds of crossing more than 16 times. 
A paper titled “Correlations of multiple rider behaviors with self-reported attitudes, perspectives on traffic rule strictness and social desirability“, authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Dimitris Nikolaou and George Yannis is published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. Numerous statistical relationships were discovered and quantified correlating the four examined unsafe rider behaviors with eight latent unobserved variables. All covariances between unsafe behaviors were found to be positive and statistically significant, indicating that a rider who will engage more frequently in every single one of the four examined unsafe riding behaviors is more likely to also engage in all the others as well.
The World Health Organisation – Regional Office for Europe (WHO-Europe) recently published a Report titled: “Supporting healthy urban transport and mobility in the context of COVID-19“. The recommendations in this guidance can help in achieving multiple societal objectives, including: transport safety and efficiency; improved quality of urban life; reduced emission of air pollutants and greenhouse gases, and reduced noise; and greater opportunities to adopt a physically active lifestyle, while supporting economic recovery.
Elsevier has published the International Encyclopedia of Transportation on May 2021. Containing almost 600 articles, the Encyclopedia brings a cross-cutting and integrated approach to all aspects of transportation from a variety of interdisciplinary fields including engineering, operations research, economics, geography and sociology in order to understand the changes taking place. Emphasising the interaction between these different aspects of research, it offers new solutions to modern-day problems related to transportation. NTUA actively contributed with the following paper: Traffic Flow Volume and Safety
According to the 8th Euro-Barometer for Responsible Driving, recently published by the Fondation VINCI Autoroutes, Greece has the highest rate of drivers (16%) that have been involved or almost involved in a road accident due to mobile phone use in Europe (EU average 11%). 57% of Greek drivers admitted calling while driving using a Bluetooth system, 53% using headphones and 42% without using any hands-free equipment. Moreover, 27% of Greek drivers stated sending and reading text messages or e-mails on their mobile phones while driving, whereas the respective European average is 22%. In addition, 11% of drivers in Greece report to have watched a film or video on a smartphone or tablet while driving, whereas the European average is 7%.
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of National University of Science and Technology of the Sultanate of Oman (NU) organized with great success the first lecture in the context of International Webinar series on Sustainable Road Safety, which was held on 5 May. Dr. Stergios Mavromatis, NTUA Assistant Professor, delivered a webinar titled Role of Infrastructure design in achieving sustainable Road safety. The Webinar provided a deep insight into current issues in accident analysis and discussed the proactive and reactive strategies with appropriate examples. The Vision Zero and Safe System Approach were presented, while the improvement of road design to reduce potential crashes was explained with practical examples.
The fifth Newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project BeOpen (European forum and observatory for open science in transport) was recently released with the results of the second event held virtually at the US TRB (Transportation Research Board) 2021 Annual meeting and successive presentations of the TOPOS Observatory and Forum key features to the transport and open science community.
The European Commission has recently published the Study on market development and safety of personal mobility devices (PMDs) and L-category vehicles, prepared by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL). The main objectives of this Study were to provide an inventory of the various types of personal mobility devices available on the market, to provide a detailed analysis of the market and the influence of the existing legislations at EU and national level and to provide a collection and evaluation of available data and information on accidents involving personal mobility devices.
The German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) recently published a Report titled Safety Performance Indicators in road traffic – Overview and experiences from international practice. The findings of this Report contribute to the conceptual framework of the “Road Safety Research Programme 2019” of the German Federal Highway Research Institute, aiming to describe indicators that precede a potential accident event as a description of the state of the road traffic system and predictors of the accident.
A paper titled “Which factors lead to driving errors? A structural equation model analysis through a driving simulator experiment” authored by Panagiotis Papantoniou, George Yannis and Eleni Christofa is published in Journal of IATSS. Data were obtained from a driving simulation experiment in which 95 participants covering all ages were asked to drive under different types of distraction (no distraction, conversation with passenger, cell phone use) in rural and urban road environment, as well as in both low and high traffic conditions. Structural Equation Models were developed and the driving error was modeled as a latent variable based on several individual driving simulator parameters. The results of this complex model reveal that the impact of driver characteristics and area type are the only statistically significant factors affecting the probability of driving errors. Interestingly, neither conversing with a passenger nor talking on the cell phone have a statistically significant impact on driving error behaviour which highlights the importance of the present analysis and more specifically the development of a measure that represents overall driving error behaviour instead of individual driving errors variables.
The Sustainable Mobility for All Initiative (SuM4All), World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and the International Road Federation (IRF) have launched a Report titled Sustainable Mobility: Policy Making for Data Sharing. The Report draws attention to the need for policy guidance for data sharing between public and private sector stakeholders in the transportation sector. Increasing digitalization of mobility can accelerate the transition toward sustainable urban mobility.
The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Report titled: Road Crash Trauma, Climate Change, Pollution and the Total Costs of Speed: Six graphs that tell the story. The purpose of this Report is to provide information on the relationships relevant to fundamental road transport policies, design, and operation. Well-established evidence shows the importance of managing travel speeds for road safety, for efficiency, for improved inclusion, and for greenhouse gas and other emissions.
The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), under the new BIGRS Program 2020-2025, hosts the new Speed Management Hub. In this platform, the GRSF team provides evidence-based road safety knowledge to help manage speed through infrastructure interventions, effective enforcement, targeted awareness measures, and vehicle technology, highly useful also for the UN Global Road Safety Week pledge for 30km/h speed limit in urban areas. Key engagements from this focus area include the provision of technical expertise to program partners, countries and cities on speed management and the preparation and publication of Global Speed Management Guidelines.
The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) announced the launch of their newly redesigned website: roadsafetyfacility.org. This project provides better access to the use of GRSF research and products will improve guidance and advocacy actions to address the global road safety crisis. Some of the new features of this site are Interactive Road Safety Country Profiles, Speed Management Hub and DRIVER platform.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has recently published the PIN Flash Report 40 titled: Are Medical Fitness to Drive Procedures Fit for Purpose? with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report examines the current state of play in PIN countries regarding the assessment of medical fitness to drive, with reference to the 2006 EU Directive on Driving Licence and recommends that a standardised screening process be considered across all Member States when assessing a driver’s fitness to drive. The process should be based on international best practice and ideally, consistent across all jurisdictions.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Impact of pandemic to mobility behavior in the European Union using time-series analysis” was recently presented by Marianthi Kallidoni. This Diploma Thesis revealed that school closing is the most important exogenous factor for describing driving or walking, while the effect of “Stay at home” orders was not a significant factor for the evolution of people movements. In addition, countries which suffered the most due to the pandemic showed a strong correlation with the restrictive measures. Furthermore, no time-series models were found to describe the countries which implemented weak countermeasures. 
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Investigation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mobility in Greece using time series analysis” was recently presented by Eleni Blatsouka. Data on mobility and restrictive measures were collected from online databases and ARIMA time series models were developed for Greece and Athens with dependent variables: driving or walking and with exogenous factor one of the restrictive measures. It was demonstrated that the closing of educational institutions and lockdown are the most important exogenous factors for describing mobility, while the curfew and the mandatory use of mask in all public areas are not significant factors. In addition, seasonal models appear to produce better forecasts than the non-seasonal ones.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Time Series Analysis of Vehicle and Pedestrian Traffic in Athens” was recently presented by Nick Economou. The result of this Diploma Thesis is that from summer onwards the forecasted mobility evolution of drivers and pedestrians in Athens Great Area is lower than the observed one, which may be due to summer holidays and high temperatures during summer months in which the prediction was based. Considering the modal split on the examined roads in the center of Athens, it is observed a reduction in the use of passenger vehicles with a simultaneous increase in the use of taxis, which may be due to the adaptation of drivers to the new traffic conditions of the Panepistimiou street brought about by the Athens Great Walk pilot operation.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Impact of weather conditions and rush on road safety” was recently presented by Giota Spanou. Data of 42 young drivers were collected, from a driving simulator experiment with and without any time pressure in good weather conditions, in fog, rain, and snow. Linear and binomial logistic regression models were developed for the mean driving speed, reaction time, headway and accident probability. The application of the mathematical models showed that snow and rain lead to a significant increase in the probability of an accident. Fog increases the accident probability only in the event of a dangerous event and time pressure seems to have the same effects as snow, a fact that should concern drivers.
An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Correlation of declared and revealed driver behaviour using smartphone sensors” was recently presented by Nadia Kokkali. 19 drivers naturalistic driving data were collected through the OSeven smartphone application and the respective questionnaire. Two regression poisson statistical models were developed, indicating that driving experience, driver age, number of injury accidents in which the driver was involved, vehicle age, fines received by the driver during the last 3 years are all associated with increased harsh events. In most of the cases, a convergence between stated and revealed behaviour was observed.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has recently published a Report titled: Road Safety Priorities for the EU: Briefing to Members of the European Parliament. In this briefing, ETSC outlines its recommendations to MEPs on what can be done to reach the new 2030 road safety targets, as input to the European Parliament’s Own Initiative Report on Road Safety. The Road Safety Framework proposes eight new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) against which EU Member State performance will be analysed to set outcome targets based on the indicators.
The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) partnership with iRAP’s award-winning Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) programme, delivered the FIA School Assessment Toolkit to identify high-risk schools, establish and conduct safety assessments, communicate results and scale-up outcomes. The Toolkit provides over 30 knowledge documents, guidelines and templates to plan, resource, apply and advocate for school zone improvements that will save children’s lives by delivering a 3-star or better journey to school.
A new book titled ‘Highway Safety Analytics and Modeling‘ authored by Dominique Lord, Xiao Qin, Srinivas R. Geedipally, has been recently published. 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
A new book titled “Road safety. Technical solutions to a behavioural and technological problem with a scientific approach” authored by Pasquale Colonna, Vittorio Ranieri, Nicola Berloco and Paolo Intini was recently published. This book is aimed to provide both the scientific background and an operational framework for safety enhancement of existing roads, applicable regardless of the specific country and to prioritise the human value thanks to the benefits from reduced severe crashes.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has recently published a Report titled: The Impact of COVID-19 on Traffic Safety and Mobility Education. The Report focuses on the effect of the restrictions imposed by most European Governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular the closure of schools, affected the provision of traffic safety and mobility education in their country, their work related to it, and how they adapted to it. The potential for Traffic Safety and Mobility Education improvement during and after the pandemic is discussed.
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 (Holistic Approach for Driver Role Integration and Automation Allocation for European Mobility Needs) published recently the 1st HADRIAN Newsletter. One-year technical work is presented, highlighting the HADRIAN operational concept for improved driver role for automated driving and the respective driver state monitoring capability and HMI approach, together with related safety and impact assessment and the elaboration of ethical and legal implications for automated driving.
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. Οbjective information about numbers, safety, users and their behaviour is scarce and needs to be strengthened.
