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
A Diploma Thesis titled “Acceptance of environmental transport charging policies” was recently presented by Asimina Korentzelou. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate drivers’ acceptance of environmental transport charging policies with emphasis on environmental charging (annual card) for private cars access in Athens center. On that purpose, data were collected through a questionnaire survey, using stated preference methodology. The results demonstrate that annual card cost and travel time savings are the main factors for the acceptance of the annual card. Furthermore, men, young people and high-income travelers are more likely to accept the annual card and environmental traffic policies. Finally, it was observed that the environmental awareness of drivers affects the acceptance of environmental traffic policies. 
Apostolos Ziakopoulos has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled: Spatial Analysis of Road Safety and Traffic Behaviour using High Resolution Multi-parametric Data. This PhD thesis was carried out at the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens under the supervision of Prof. George Yannis, using data from OSeven Telematics.
The main objective of the present doctoral dissertation is the spatial analysis of harsh event frequencies in road segments using multi-parametric data, including (i) high resolution naturalistic driving and driver behavior data from smartphone sensors, (ii) microscopic road segment geometry and road network characteristic data from digital maps and (iii) high resolution traffic data. Spatial analyses were performed on two parallel pillars: (i) Prediction models were developed in an urban road network training area, with the intent to transfer them to a second urban road network testing area and assess their predictive performance and (ii) Causal models including road user behavior and traffic input data were calibrated in an urban arterial study area per traffic state, in order to investigate additional underlying correlations in an effort to further understand the phenomena of harsh braking and harsh acceleration frequencies. Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression (GWPR) models, Bayesian Conditional Autoregressive Prior (CAR) models and Extreme Gradient Boosting algorithms with random cross-validation (RCV XGBoost) and spatial cross-validation (SPCV XGBoost) were implemented.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Preferences towards e-scooters in Athens” was recently presented by Vasilis Maragkoudakis. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate the preferences towards e-scooters in Athens and to identify the most important factors affecting traveler modal choices in Athens. Logistic regression models were developed (multinomial and binary), which demonstrated that the probability of choosing an e-scooter depends largely on the cost, time, comfort, attitudes, habits and the demographic characteristics of the respondents. The faster and the more economical is the trip and the more familiar is the traveler with e-scooters is, the more likely he/she is to choose them over other means of transport.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Event identification based on driving characteristics on rural roads” was recently presented by Akrivi Varela. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to identify events based on driving characteristics on rural roads and determine the main factors that can describe the situation before and during an event. Results showed that random forest model performs much better than the binomial logistic regression in identifying event occurrence with very few false alarms. Moreover, speed and longitudinal acceleration along with total distance driven from the beginning of the driving session, turned out to better describe the case of driving one minute prior to an event. Finally, driving during an event can be sufficiently described through speed, the deviation of the vehicle from the middle of the road as well as the time headway with the vehicle ahead.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a PIN Briefing “The Impact of Covid-19 Lockdowns on Road Deaths in April 2020“. This report assesses the impacts that had on road deaths in Europe during the month of April 2020 – by which time most countries were in lockdown. Out of 25 EU countries for which data is available, 19 saw a decrease in the number of road deaths in April 2020 compared to the month of April in the previous three years. In April 2020, 910 people lost their lives in road collisions in the EU25, compared to 1.415 on average during the reference period: 505 deaths were prevented. A conclusion is that there were very substantial reductions in the number of road deaths as a result of the big drops in traffic volumes due to confinement. 
TheEU’s High Level Group for Road Safety held a discussion on road safety in the COVID era on 16 June and agreed on some conclusions setting out common principles for the forthcoming transitional period. It is highlighted the importance of obtaining and sharing timely data and the enhancement of safe active mobility. Ιt has also emphasized the need to reinstate road safety enforcement, particularly if higher volumes of cars return to the roads and to restore public confidence in public transport.
In the framework of the Executive MSc in Cities Laboratory (EMC Lab) of London School of Economics (LSE), a programme for urban professionals in the public, private and third sectors who want to understand and deliver change in cities, NTUA contributed actively with a presentation titled “Strategic Transport Planning in Athens“. It was highlighted the current mobility situation in Athens, the effect of COVID-19 in traffic and road safety and new mobility interventions.
The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “Implementation of National Safe System Policies: A Challenge”. This report provides a contribution to global road safety through a summary of National Safe System Policies and Implementation in relation to the Safe System approach. The report also highlights the steps that low, middle and high-income countries alike can take to accelerate progress towards Safe System outcomes. The report includes a number of key findings from a review and survey of international practice related to national Safe System policies and implementation, which are listed below and expanded further in the body of the report. The focus of this report is related to infrastructure road safety elements, with limited focus on the institutional arrangements and management of safety.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 39th PIN Flash Report “How to improve the safety of goods vehicles in the EU?“. This report examines the toll transport of goods and services has taken in terms of road deaths over the period 2010 to 2018. It examines the performance of individual countries, as well as the European Union as a whole, in tackling the risks, and describes some of the policies needed to reduce deaths and serious injuries in the future.
A new NACTO resource on emerging street practices for pandemic response and recovery was developed through a collaboration between NACTO, the NACTO Global Designing Cities Initiative, Bloomberg Associates, Street Plans, and Sam Schwartz. This resource aggregates and synthesizes emerging practices in transportation and street design in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights cities’ current efforts to re-organize streets to best manage this crisis and support economic recovery. This new resource will be revised and expanded regularly as more data becomes available on what approaches are the most successful at meeting city goals.
A paper titled “A critical overview of driver recording tools” authored by Apostolis Ziakopoulos, Dimitris Tselentis, Armira Kontaxi and George Yannis, is now published in Journal of Safety Research. The objective of this review paper is to present and comparatively assess the various driver recording tools that researchers have at their disposal. A critical synthesis of the results was conducted, providing the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing each tool and including additional knowledge regarding ease of experimental implementation, data handling issues, impacts on subsequent analyses, as well as the respective cost parameters. New technologies provide undeniably powerful tools that allow for seamless data handling, storage, and analysis, such as smartphones and in-vehicle data recorders. However, this sometimes comes at considerable costs (which may or may not pay off at a later stage), while legacy driver recording methods still have their own niches to fill in research. 
The new emblematic sustainable urban mobility arrangements within the Athens Great Walk project were presented by NTUA Professor George Yannis at the Athens City Council on May 11, 2020, which unanimously accepted the breakthrough and brave choices of Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis for extended regain of urban public space, public transport in priority, and safe and efficient mobility of pedestrians and cyclists. 
The European Commission has recently published the “Study on the feasibility, costs and benefits of retrofitting advanced driver assistance to improve road safety”, prepared by VTT and Ecorys. This study examined the technical feasibility of various retrofit ADAS systems (voluntarily or mandatory installable) while demonstrated the potential safety impacts of retrofitting the vehicle fleet and presented a cost-benefit assessment for the measures. Detection and warning of pedestrians and cyclists nearby the front or side of the vehicle proved having the highest benefit-cost ratio, as addressing the Vulnerable Road Users safety, being the key current road safety problem.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) published recently the “European Regional Status Report on Road Safety 2019” with the active contribution of NTUA. The European Regional Status Report on Road Safety describes the progress made by Governments in the Region. This Report demonstrates that over 221 people are killed on roads every day in the WHO European Region while thousands more are injured or disabled, with long-lasting effects. People from the eastern part of our Region bear the highest burden of road-traffic mortality and morbidity.
Audrey Testaferrata de Noto has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled: Driver Perception-Reaction Times in Level 3 Automated Vehicles. This PhD thesis was carried out at the Faculty for the Build Environment of the University of Malta under the supervision of NTUA Prof. George Yannis. The scope of the research was to establish the Perception-Reaction Time (PRT) of drivers in a simulated Level 3 vehicle and to examine the interdependency between the person-specific characteristics in relation to different scenarios featuring different in-vehicle distractions and different type of alerts and subsequently to compare these values with those of standard specifications used in road design in different countries for the calculation of Stopping Sight Distances (SSD). The results gave an average perception-reaction time of 4.23 seconds and showed that the younger age groups have lower PRTs for all scenarios than their older counterparts.
A paper titled “An exploration of European road users’ safety attitudes towards speeding” authored by Alexandra Laiou, Athanasios Theofilatos, George Yannis, Uta Meesmann and Katrien Torfs is now published in Journal of Transportation Safety & Security. The objective of this paper is to analyse attitudes and opinions of Europeans on speeding and compare them amongst countries based on demographic characteristics as well as to provide a number of recommendations to be used in the effort to reduce speeding and improve road safety. All reported attitudes depend strongly on participants’ gender and age. The majority of people who accept driving over the speed limit do not believe that speed limits are set at acceptable levels.
In France since July 1, 2018, the speed limit on all two-way roads, without a central separator, outside urban areas was reduced from 90 km/h to 80 km/h. The French Road Safety Observatory (ONISR) and Cerema published recently a provisional 18-months evaluation in which it was demonstrated that over the year 2019, compared to the reference average for 2013-2017, 211 lives were saved on the network outside built-up areas outside motorways, while at the same time 44 more lives were lost in built-up areas.
Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) in collaboration with the VIAS Institute recently published the Manual on “Towards the 12 voluntary global targets for road safety”, providing guidance for countries on activities and measures to achieve the voluntary global road safety performance targets. It spells out what type of activities need to be undertaken, what data sources can be used and how performance can be measured and presented. It defines each target and points out what actions need to be taken and how each target can be measured.
The results of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 SaferAfrica project are highlighted at the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) of the European Commission. SaferAfrica, aiming to share expertise between Europe and Africa, focused on four pillars: Road Safety Knowledge and Data, a Road Safety Traffic Management Capacity Review, Capacity Building and Training and Sharing Good Practices. The most innovative results of the project are the African Road Safety Observatory and the African-European Dialogue Platform on Road Safety, developed with the active contribution of NTUA.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Spatio-temporal analysis of traffic safety using data from smartphone sensors” was recently presented by Elina Frantzola. Data from smartphone sensors on driver behaviour were combined with traffic data from the Athens Traffic Management Centre and the respective geometric characteristics from Google Maps in order to produce the respective GIS maps and allow for statistical analysis. The statistical models developed demonstrated that traffic characteristics (traffic speed and occupancy) have the most statistically significant impact on the frequency of harsh events compared to road geometric characteristics and driver behaviour data. Finally, a strong correlation between harsh events and time variation was found, indicating an overall increase in harsh events during nighttime.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Driving behaviour during texting and surfing in rural roads using a driving simulator” was recently presented by Marios Sekadakis. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate the impact of texting and web surfing through smartphone on the driving behaviour and safety of young drivers on rural roads. It was found that driver distraction leads to statistically significant increase of accident probability, headway distance and lateral distance variation. On the other hand, it was observed that speed variation and headway distance variation were reduced.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Investigation of Flying Autonomous Vehicles traveller acceptance in Greece” was recently presented by George Priftis. The objective of the present Diploma Thesis is to investigate traveller acceptance of Flying Autonomous Vehicles in Greece, as well as the identification of the most significant factors affecting that decision. Results show that the of acceptance mostly depends on the cost, time, comfort, choices, habits and demographics of Greek travellers. Faster and cheaper trips together with higher technology culture lead to higher acceptance of flying autonomous vehicles.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Comparative Analysis of Traffic Accident factors per Driver Nationality in the European Union” was recently presented by Aikaterini Skliami. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is the comparative analysis of road accident factors for the various nationalities of killed driver in the European Union. The application of the models revealed that driver nationality had a statistically significant effect on the number of drivers killed in traffic accidents. The main factors differentiating traffic accidents of local and foreign drivers are driver gender and accident area type.
A Diploma Thesis titled “Driver choices towards ridesharing” was recently presented by Athanasia Boulougari. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate and analyse drivers’ preferences towards ridesharing, with focus on investigating whether passengers intend to share vehicles and identifying the main factors determining the choice of ridesharing service as a travel mode. Results indicate that especially young and female travelers were found willing more to use ridesharing services. Furthermore, it was found that when traveling for work, increased transit time and number of work related weekly trips lead to increased probability of ridesharing use.
The fifth edition of the Glossary for Transport Statistics is now published by the ITF, Eurostat and UNECE. The Glossary for Transport Statistics was published for the first time in 1994 with the purpose of assisting member countries during the collection of data on transport using the Common Questionnaire developed by the UNECE, ITF and Eurostat. It now comprises 744 definitions and represents a point of reference for all those involved in transport statistics. The road accidents section can be proved highly useful for international road safety statistics.
The World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility published recently the “Guide for Road Safety Opportunities and Challenges: Low- and Middle-income Country Profiles“. The Report aims to support decision-making with key data, social and economic assessments for all 125 Low- and Middle-Income Countries. The Road Safety Country Profiles present information on management, roads, speed, vehicles, road users, and post-crash care, along with information on the current status for each country, region and with extensive information on key risk factors, issues and opportunities.
The Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs was launched by the European Commission in September 2018, as an effort to drive forward intercontinental cooperation on an equal footing. This related Transport Task Force has delivered recently with the active contribution of NTUA, a Report offering recommendations and conclusions on three important areas of transport cooperation: aviation, road safety and connectivity. On Road Safety the Report brings forward thirteen recommendations to reduce road accident injuries, addressing the five main priority areas: road safety management and data collection, infrastructure safety, vehicle safety, safety of road users and post-crash care.
The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report titled “Safe Micromobility” as part of the ITF Corporate Partnership Board and with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report explores the safety aspects associated with the increasing use of e-scooters and other forms of micromobility in cities. It considers a range of actions to make urban traffic with micromobility safe, including in street layout, vehicle design and vehicle operation, user education and enforcement of rules. The report offers ten recommendations for policy makers, city planners, operators and manufacturers.
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), the Flemish Foundation for Traffic Knowledge (VSV) and Fundación MAPFRE have published a Report titled “Key Principles for Traffic Safety and Mobility Education”, as part of the LEARN! (Leveraging Education to Advance Road safety Now) project and it sets out 17 recommendations that should be implemented in all European countries, in order to ensure that everyone – and especially children and youngsters – receive high quality traffic safety and mobility education. They are accompanied by best practice examples that illustrate how these principles can be applied in practice.
NTUA Professor George Yannis made an invited lecture at the Permanent Road Safety Committee of the Hellenic Parliament on “European Road Safety Policy and Good Practices Worldwide” on February 6th, 2020. He stressed the importance for measures on priority risk factors (speed, alcohol, distraction, seat belt, helmet) and serious road safety capacity-building with appropriate evidence-based policy making.
