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. Considerable evidence indicates that medical conditions prevalent among older individuals lead to impairments in visual, cognitive, or psychomotor functions needed to drive safely. 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. Perceptions of driving difficulties from both groups were examined using data from an extensive questionnaire. Samples of drivers diagnosed with MCI and age-matched controls were asked to report the frequency with which they experienced driving difficulties due to functional deficits and knowledge of new traffic rules and traffic signs. 

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 “Briefing: Independence in Investigation of Transport Accidents”. ETSC Board of Directors has agreed that promoting a set of principles for independence of transport accident investigation in Europe, principles under which the requirements for independent investigation could be met by the EU itself, by each Member State and by any other European country, should be an ongoing concern for ETSC, while work on this should not be at the expense of other ETSC policy priorities. The Board issues this briefing, first to make known its concern by setting out proposed principles and indicating how work might be started on promoting them, and secondly to invite any sponsors who may wish to discuss funding such work to contact ETSC.  

The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a Report titled: “Understanding and bridging the differences between country-reported and WHO-estimated road traffic fatality data”, based on the EuroMed Transport Support Project. 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 objective of this Diploma Thesis was to examine pedestrians’ traffic and safety behaviour while texting or web-surfing, when crossing signalized intersections. 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. The objective of this Diploma Thesis was to investigate for the first time the impact of economic, social and transport indicators on serious road injuries in the European Union. The 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. 

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. Smartphone driver behaviour data were processed in a GIS computer environment, resulting to the development of new tables describing the phenomena observed on the map of a major road axis in Athens, in nodes and links. Analytic maps were developed aiming 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.