A paper titled “A review of spatial approaches in road safety” authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, and George Yannis is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. The aim of the present research is to critically review the existing literature on different spatial approaches through which researchers handle the dimension of space in its various aspects in their studies and analyses. Specifically, the use of different areal unit levels in spatial road safety studies is investigated, different modelling approaches are discussed, and the corresponding study design characteristics are summarized in respective tables including traffic, road environment and area parameters and spatial aggregation approaches. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Report titled “Briefing: EU Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety”. In June 2019, the European Commission adopted the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030, outlining specific policy measures planned for 2021-2030 and developing on the EU Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety published in May 2018. This briefing reflects ETSC’s first assessment of these initiatives with suggestions for further development and implementation. This document refers mainly to the measures addressed by the European Commission in these latest documents.  

Twelve EU Member States are joining forces to share smart ideas for improving road safety, as part of a new EU-funded project: “Road Safety Exchange”, launched in Brussels in October. There are important differences in the road safety performance of the different EU Member States. The three-year EU Road Safety Exchange project aims to tackle these disparities and will link up experts from Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden. Transport experts from the twelve participating countries will work together to share best practice on reducing speed, building safe infrastructure and improve enforcement, data collection, as well as the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in urban areas. 

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published the full version of the Road Safety Annual Report 2019, which provides an overview of road safety performance for 41 countries. The report outlines the most recent road safety developments there and provides comparative data for the main road safety indicators. It also offers detailed analysis by road user, age group and types of road. It describes the crash data collection process in IRTAD countries, the road safety strategies and targets in place and information on recent trends in speeding, drink-driving and other aspects of road user behaviour.  

A paper titled “A systematic cost-benefit analysis of 29 road safety measures” authored by Stijn Daniels, Heike Martensen, Annelies Schoeters, Wouter Van den Berghe, Eleonora Papadimitriou, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Susanne Kaiser, Eva Aigner-Breuss, Aggelos Soteropoulos, Wim Wijnen, Wendy Weijermars, Laurent Carnis, Rune Elvik, Oscar Martin Perez is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. For the purposes of this study the authors collected and (re-)analyzed evidence in order to conduct cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) for 29 road safety measures. The information on crash costs was based on data from a survey in European countries.  A systematic procedure was applied including corrections for inflation and Purchasing Power Parity in order to express all the monetary information in the same units (EUR, 2015). Cost-benefit analyses were carried out for measures with favourable estimated effects on road safety and for which relevant information on costs could be found. Results were assessed in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios and net present value and are included also at the SafetyCube DSS. 

NACTO’s Guidelines for Regulating Shared Micromobility outline best practices for cities and public entities regulating and managing shared micromobility services on their streets. Its recommendations were developed to reflect the wide variety of experiences that North American cities have had in regulating and managing shared micromobility. Shared micromobility is still in its infancy and there are outstanding questions and option for which there is not yet a defined best practice, as highlighted within these Guidelines.  

Road traffic crashes are not just statistics, they affect real lives and real people. Many people have been affected by road traffic crashes, or know people whose lives and relationships have been torn apart by these needless tragedies. The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety launched a survey aiming to bring forth the voices of people to highlight the problem and call for governments to act urgently. The results will be released at the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety and disseminated through press releases, publications, mass and social media. They will provide evidence to show government leaders what needs to be done at local, regional, and global levels to save lives. 

Within the European Mobility Week 2019, the European Commission and the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety co-organised a Road Safety Roundtable in Brussels on 16 September. During this event, a commitment from European cities, coordinated by POLIS and Eurocities, entitled “The New Paradigm for Safe City Streets” was handed over including 10 principles to be recognized by the cities, as necessary for sound and effective action for traffic safety.  

The UN General Assembly published recently a Report on Improving Global Road Safety, prepared by the World Health Organization in consultation with the United Nations regional commissions and other partners of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration. The Report highlights that while the number of road traffic deaths has stabilized, as indicated in the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018, significant reductions have not been observed, and road traffic injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and young adults between the ages of 5 and 29 years. 

A paper titled “Driving difficulties as reported by older drivers with mild cognitive impairment and without neurological impairment” authored by Sophia Vardaki, Anne E. Dickerson, Ion Beratis, George Yannis and Sokratis G. Papageorgiou is now published in Traffic Injury Prevention. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors determining driving difficulties as seen from the viewpoint of 30 older drivers with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 30 age-matched controls without cognitive impairment. The analysis revealed that 2 factors underlie MCI perceptions of driving difficulties, representing (1) difficulties associated with late detection combined with slowed response to relevant targets in the peripheral field of view and (2) difficulties associated with divided attention between tasks requiring switching from automatic to conscious processing particularly of long duration. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Report titled “Road Safety Priorities for the EU 2020-2030: Briefing for the new European Parliament”. In June 2019, the Commission published a new Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety that includes a new long-term target to halve road deaths by 2030 as well as, for the first time, a target to reduce serious injuries by the same amount. The EU must implement this new policy framework so that it ensures both the highest practicable level of safety and a fair distribution of safety across the European Union. New legislative proposals on improving both infrastructure and vehicle safety are currently being finalised. Their further implementation and the development of new legislation in other areas will be in the hands of newly elected MEPs over the period 2019-2024.  

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Report titled “Independence in Investigation of Transport Accidents”. The aim of this Report is to promote a set of principles for independence of transport accident investigation in Europe, under which the requirements for independent investigation could be met by the EU itself, by each Member State and by any other European country.   

The EU-funded EuroMed Transport Support Project (EuroMed) and World Health Organisation (WHO) released a joint Report titled: “Understanding and bridging the differences between country-reported and WHO-estimated road traffic fatality data“. It focuses on the considerable challenges in collecting complete, accurate and reliable road traffic fatality data that some countries worldwide are facing. Moreover, it attempts to explain the disparity between WHO estimates and country-reported data on road traffic fatality and provide suggestions on what steps countries can take to strengthen their data systems. 

A Diploma Thesis titled “Investigation of traffic and safety behaviour of pedestrians texting or web-surfing” was recently presented by Marilia Ropaka. The regression analyses developed in this research pointed out that in high pedestrian traffic, mobile use not only decreases pedestrians’ speed, regardless of their age, but also increases their probability of being involved in an accident with an oncoming vehicle. Results indicated that distraction caused by texting or web-surfing had a negative impact on pedestrians’ main traffic and safety characteristics.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Impact of economic, social and transport indicators on serious road injuries in the European Union” was recently presented by Maria Charalampidi. Generalized Linear Models application lead to the conclusion that the percentage of passenger cars with EuroNcap scores 5 stars has the most important impact and its increase leads to serious road injuries decrease. Moreover, the increase of the percentage of buses leads to significant decrease not only to the number of serious road injuries but also to the severity of road accidents.  

A paper titled “Analysis of driver behaviour through smartphone data: The case of mobile phone use while driving” authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou, Anastasia Argyropoulou, Dimitris Tselentis, and George Yannis is now published in Safety Science. The aim of this paper is to explore driving behaviour during mobile phone use on the basis of detailed driving analytics collected by smartphone sensors from OSeven Telematics. The data came from a sample of one hundred drivers (18,850 trips) during a naturalistic driving experiment over four months. The results suggest that mobile phone use while driving may be accurately predicted by the model in more than 70% of cases. 

Road Safety is acknowledged as a priority issue in the EuroMed partner countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia). However, the collection of credible road safety data is a major challenge. In this context, the recent EuroMed Report, which was launched with the active contribution of NTUA, consists of provision of technical assistance on setting up road safety reliable, harmonized and comparable data collection systems at the EuroMed Partner Countries and sharing at regional level. The Final Report concludes that the adoption of common definitions for road crash variables and values strongly depends on the successful implementation of basic definitions (accident, road, casualty severity) and the systematic and complete reporting of crashes and casualties. 

On 28 May, 45 experts from Europe and Australia were gathered in Gothenburg, Sweden, within the framework of the Horizon 2020 project Levitate, in order to discuss which societal impacts Connected and Automated Vehicles will have. Levitate is building tools to help European cities, regions and national governments prepare for a future with increasing levels of Automated Vehicles in passenger cars, urban transport services and urban logistics. The Workshop marked the first meeting of the LEVITATE Stakeholder Group, which aims to facilitate a continuous dialogue between experts, users and the consortium about the impacts of Connected and Automated Transport (CAT). 

NTUA contributed actively to the 1st Stakeholder Workshop with the following presentation:  CATS-PST Connected and Automated Transport Systems Policy Support Tool

The European Commission – DG Move has published a study titled “Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Charging and Internalisation of Transport Externalities” which aims to assess the extent to which existing policies internalise the external and infrastructure costs of transport and to discuss ways by which further internalisation could be achieved. As input for this assessment, the infrastructure and external costs of the various transport modes are estimated and a comprehensive overview of transport taxes and charges applied in the various countries is provided.  According to the study results, the most important cost category is accident costs equating to 29% of the total external costs, which on the contrary of most other costs it is not targeted by any taxes or charges aiming its reduction.   

The European Commission – DG Move has published a Staff Working Document titled “EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” which includes details as to how it intends to put its Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety into practice . This Document includes a first list of Road Safety Key Performance Indicators (KPI), elaborated in close cooperation with Member States and the active contribution of NTUA, that will be monitored across the EU to underpin the target of 50% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. The list (including indicators like vehicle safety, seat belt and helmet wearing rate, speed compliance and post-crash care) is a living document that will be developed further over time, but first data can be gathered on this basis from next year.  

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) published the 13th edition of PIN Annual Report , with the active contribution of NTUA, presented at the 2019 Annual PIN Conference which took place with great success on 19 June, 2019 in Brussels. According to this PIN Report, the new European figures show that the number of persons killed last year fell by just 1% and the EU target to cut road deaths in half over the decade to 2020 looks well out of reach.

Ireland was the winner of this year’s ETSC Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) award, being the second safest EU Member State in 2018, in terms of road mortality (road deaths per million inhabitants) and having moved up five places in the ranking of EU countries since 2010 when it held the 7th place.  

The 1st newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project Levitate was recently released highlighting the key activities of the first 6 months of the project. It contains an inspiring interview with Rune Elvik, Senior research officer at TØI, suggesting that any progress in Connected and Automated Transport cannot eliminate the human factor. Furthermore, it highlights the results from the first Workshop of the Levitate Stakeholder Group in Gothenburg on May 2019 and of the respective presentation of Levitate project at the scientific Workshop organized by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) on ‘Digitalisation and Road Safety Research’ in Athens on May 2019. 

A new book titled ‘La sécurité routière en France – Road Safety in France‘ authored by Laurent Carnis, Catherine Gabaude and Marie-Line Gallenne, was published in May 2019. Since the 1970s, road accidents have undergone a remarkable evolution, which has led to fewer fatalities and fewer casualties on French roads. But the accidents remain too numerous and still defeat the chronicles. Greater road safety justifies measures that give rise to lively discussions where everyone claims to be an expert. This book guides the reader through themes such as trauma victims, alcohol or drugs driving. 

A paper titled “Safety Culture among Private and Professional Drivers in Norway and Greece: Examining the Influence of National Road Safety Culture” authored by Tor-Olav Nævestad, Alexandra Laiou, Ross O. Phillips, Torkel Bjørnskau and George Yannis is now published in Safety Journal. This study investigates road safety culture (RSC) as an explanation for this discrepancy by: (1) Comparing the road safety behaviours among professional and private drivers in Norway and Greece, (2) Examining factors influencing road safety behaviours, focusing especially on national road safety culture, and (3) Examining the influence of road safety behaviours and other factors (e.g., demographic and work-related variables) on accident involvement. The results indicate that aggressive violations are more similar among private and professional drivers within the national samples, than across the national samples, while seat belt use seems to vary according to the professional versus private dimension.  

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.