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  published the HADRIAN Newsletter November 2020.  The newsletter provides highlights from the technical work completed during the project’s first year, as well as plans for the following year which focus on translating the HADRIAN operational concept into concrete researchand development activities. NTUA actively contributed with a research titled “HADRIAN – Holistic Approach for Driver Role Integration and Automation Allocation for European Mobility Needs”. 

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. The objective information about numbers, safety, users and their behaviour is scarce. 

The Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI) published a Position Paper titled “Towards an evidence-based national road safety programme“. The paper intends to offer guidance to Member States on developing a national road safety programme. Its main message is that a road safety programme must be based on scientifically sound evidence in order to ensure that it focuses on the most relevant issues and implements the most appropriate treatments.  

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), recently released a Report titled “Global Trade in Used Vehicles“, which looks at 146 countries that import used vehicles, and calls for action to regulate the trade through the adoption of a set of harmonized minimum quality standards. These would ensure used vehicles contribute to cleaner and safer fleets in recipient countries. UNEP and partners will address these issues, initially with a project focused on Africa.  

The Road Safety GB will organise the 6th conference titled “Joining the Dots“, which will be held online, on 2-3 March 2021.  This year the conference will be taking a focus on pressing topics facing the profession in this exceptional year and beyond including; changes in travel choice, the impact on roads casualties, shifting road user behaviour and predicting modal shift towards active travel. 

The fourth Newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project BeOpen (European forum and observatory for open science in transport) was recently released with all the past 6 months achievements, including activities and deliverables. The project’s goal is to progress beyond the state-of-the-art, developing an appropriate regulatory framework and policies to support innovation and deployment. 

The Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards 2020 were recently presented by Prince Michael to Road Safety Organisations who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and innovation in improving road safety in Britain and world-wide. At this 30 years celebration, several of NTUA cooperating Organisations (The World Bank, iRAP, Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety, Agilysis) were among the awarded Organisations. 

The Horizon 2020 project i-DREAMS recently released its 3rd Newsletter, presenting the main accomplishments of the project, through creative solutions and risk mitigation strategies.  The project, focusing on the analysis of the Safety Tolerance Zone, is organised in 10 Work Packages.  NTUA actively contributed in the analysis and the evaluation of WP6 (Analysis of risk factors) and WP7 (Evaluation of safety interventions).

The 4th ESRA2 Webinar took place with great success on 16 December 2020 including the NTUA presentation titled: “Moped drivers and Motorcyclists”.  This presentation was based on the results of the ESRA2 Thematic Report titled “Moped drivers and motorcyclists” focusing on key PTW attitudes from a survey that collected data from more than 35,000 road users across 32 countries worldwide. Speeding, drink and drive, helmet use and mobile phone distraction as well as self-declared safety perception of using mopeds and motorcycles, were among the key issues highlighted.    

The European Commission (DG Move) has recently developed the Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators, which is a set of practical and reliable indicators that support cities to perform a standardised evaluation of their mobility system and to measure improvements that result from new mobility practices or policies. Two out of the 18 mobility indicators concern key urban road safety indicators to be jointly considered within the new urban sustainable mobility policies.    The complete set of indicators is now available 

The European Commission (DG Move) recently presented the EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy together with an Action Plan of 82 initiatives (several of which aim to promote and enhance road safety), which lay the foundation for how the EU transport system can achieve its green and digital transformation  . Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean said: “As the backbone that connects European citizens and business, transport matters to us all. Digital technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way we move, making our mobility smarter, more efficient, and also greener”.

The IRF Data Warehouse is a web-based global road data platform and warehouse that can complement and support national and regional efforts to collect and manage data. The IRF Data Warehouse also contributes to capacity-building and advocacy activities on a number of topics and in particular, road safety. The entire time series of the IRF World Road Statistics enables immediate and effective data analysis and is complemented by a series of dashboards and interactive data visualisation tools. 

The World Road Association – PIARC  published a Report titled “Prevention and Mitigation of Tunnel-Related Collisions”.  This report presents and recommends possible organizational and technical measures one can implement to lower the probability or the mechanical consequences of tunnel related collisions, that is, collisions in which the specific characteristics of a tunnel play a role in either the cause or the effect. 

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed to support a EUR 470 million nationwide Scheme to reduce death and injury caused by traffic accidents across Greece.  NTUA had contributed to the economic analysis of this major road safety scheme. Over the next three years, national road operator Egnatia Odos will improve road safety at 7,000+ of the most dangerous sites, located across  11 Regions of Greece. The small scale safety schemes will include installation of traffic barriers, provision of anti-skid surfaces and improved warning signs and markings on roads identified as high-risk. Greek Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Kostas Karamanlis, stated that “improving road safety across Greece is a national priority and the EIB support will reduce significantly the risk of accidents at the Greek interurban road network”. 

A  paper titled “Economic Assessment of Road Infrastructure Safety Schemes in Greece Using Crash Prediction Methodology”, authored by G. Yannis, A. Dragomanovits, J. Roussou, D. Nikolaou, was presented at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 99th Annual Meeting, on January 2020.  This research presents a case study for the economic assessment of road safety schemes in crash prone locations in selected rural highways in Greece, using crash prediction models from the AASHTO Highway Safety Manual. The analysis results demonstrate the high impact of this large Road Safety Scheme.   

A paper titled “Vulnerable road users: Cross-cultural perspectives on performance and attitudes“, authored by George Yannis,  Dimitris Nikolaou, Alexandra Laiou, Yvonne Achermann Stürmer, Ilona Buttler, Dagmara Jankowska-Karpa is now published in the Journal of IATSS.  The results of this paper indicate that crossing the road at places other than nearby pedestrian crossings, reading a text message or checking social media while walking on the streets, cycling and riding without wearing a helmet, and speeding on powered two-wheelers outside built-up areas but not on motorways/freeways were the most frequently reported self-declared behaviours in 32 countries. 

The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report: “Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety Report”,  tracking progress in reducing the number of road traffic fatalities and serious injuries in cities since 2010. It presents traffic safety data collected in 48 cities participating in the ITF Safer City Streets network and compares urban with national road safety trends. It provides indicators for the risk of traffic death for different road user groups, thereby enhancing the evaluation, monitoring and benchmarking of road safety outcomes.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical factors for the identification of traffic safety events in urban areas” was recently presented by Foteini Bardi. According to the results, the random forest model proved to produce more reliable results predicting traffic safety events with a lower false alarm rate, when compared to binomial logistic regression. Moreover, factor analysis demonstrated that data representing one minute before the event can be described by speed, the deviation of the vehicle from the middle of the road and the distance from the right boundary line.  Similarly, data during the event can be better described through speed and longitudinal and lateral acceleration.   

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical factors of the influence of mobile phone use on driving behavior, based on smartphones’ data” was recently presented by Sofia Akritidou.  The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to examine and model the critical factors of mobile phone use on driver behavior through the exploitation of data from smartphone sensors. The results revealed that the parameters affecting the use of mobile phone while driving are four, the percentage of driving duration with speed above the speed limit, distance driving, average deceleration, and average speed. For the general, urban and rural models, the average deceleration had the most significant impact, whereas for the highway model, distance was the most significant parameter.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical driving parameters affecting speeding using data from smartphones” was recently presented by Dimosthenis-Marios Tzoutzoulis.  The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to identify the critical driving parameters affecting speeding using data from smartphones.  The results demonstrate that the number of harsh accelerations, the percentage of mobile use and the distance of the trip affect the speeding percentage and are correlated with the aggressive behavior of the drivers.  Furthermore, increased average acceleration does not always lead to breaking speed limits. Finally, male drivers tend to drive faster in comparison with women.  

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Guide, which gives a precise assessment on the magnitude and complexity of road safety challenges faced by Low and Middle Income Countries and assists policy makers understand the road safety framework in context of their own country systems and performance.  This valuable Guide responds to the critical need for collecting and documenting accurate road safety performance data.  

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Guide in order to assist a jurisdiction to determine the level of readiness to move to automated enforcement and -among others- aims in identifying the powerful practical value of Automated Enforcement in saving lives and reducing injuries and to identify also issues and criteria to be considered before commencing automated enforcement.  

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Report, highlighting  examples of GRSF’s effective delivery of global road safety solutions for the period of 2017-2019, such as the Green Transport in Vietnam, the BIRGS in Colombia and the Road Safety Barrier in Nepal.  Since the first volume of this publication, GRSF work has come to fruition in these years and has pushed significantly forward the road safety agenda.    

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published the Road Safety Annual Report 2020, which provides an overview of road safety performance for 42 IRTAD countries. Based on the latest data, the report describes recent road safety developments in these countries and compares their performance against the main road safety indicators. This year, a highly interesting special section on the impact of covid-19 pandemic on road accidents is added.  NTUA has contributed to the detailed report for Greece.  

A paper titled “Car drivers’ road safety performance: A benchmark across 32 countries” authored by C. Pires, K. Torfs, A. Areal, C. Goldenbel, W. Vanlaar, M. A. Granie, Y. A. Stürmer, D. S. Usami, S. Kaiser, D. Jankowska-Karpa, D. Nikolaou, H. Holte, T. Kakinuma, J. Trigoso, W. Van den Berghe, U. Meesmann, is now published in the Journal of IATSS. This paper is based on the second edition of the E-Survey of Road Users’ Attitudes (ESRA), an online survey carried out in 2018 and includes data from more than 35,000 road users across 32 countries. The objective is to present the main results of the ESRA survey regarding the four most important risky driving behaviours in traffic: driving under the influence (alcohol/drugs), speeding, mobile phone use while driving, and fatigued driving. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Position Paper concerning the European Commission roadworthiness package implementation report for Directives 2014/45/EC on periodic roadworthiness tests, 2014/47/EC on technical roadside inspections of commercial vehicles and 2014/46/EC on issuing registration certificates. ETSC has prepared this updated position paper to feed into this process including priorities not taken on board last time and new developments such as eCall and automation.   

The Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI), a program of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO),  in partnership with the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) published recently the “iRAP Star Ratings of NACTO-GDCI’s Global Street Design Guide”. Released in 2016, the Global Street Design Guide has served as a blueprint for safer and higher-performing streets, and as a tool for addressing the 1.35 million road accident deaths and up to 50 million injuries that occur each year as a result of poorly-designed roads. As such, iRAP’s Star Rating methodology offers a useful framework for validating the tools and transformations featured in the publication.  

A new book titled ‘Highway Safety Analytics and Modeling‘ authored by Dominique Lord, Xiao Qin, Srinivas R. Geedipally, is going to be published in March 2021. 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 paper titled “Meta-regressions of exposure parameters used in spatial road safety analyses, September 2020” authored by Apostolis Ziakopoulos, and George Yannis, is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies. The objective of this paper is to obtain quantitative estimates that several study characteristics impose on the values of their coefficients applying meta-regression techniques to three common exposure parameters (traffic volume/AADT, roadway length and vehicle distance traveled). Results indicate that the impact of traffic volume on crash counts was positively correlated with taking speed limit and road user age into consideration in spatial analyses, while the impact of road length on crash counts in spatial analyses was found to be higher in studies considering only fatal crashes.