Closing a great decade, full of innovation, excellence and new knowledge, and several great scientific achievements, we start an even brighter new decade, striving with more dedication, passion and creativity for safe traffic everywhere and for all.

We thank you all for the excellent cooperation, which we aim to further intensify and we are sending you our very best wishes for joyful Christmas holidays and a lucky and joyful new decade, plenty of personal and professional achievements. 

A paper titled “Safety culture among bus drivers in Norway and Greece” authored by Tor-Olav Nævestad, Ross O. Phillips, Alexandra Laiou, Torkel Bjørnskau, and George Yannis is now published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. The aims of this paper are to: (1) Examine the influence of national safety culture, sector safety focus and organizational safety culture on the safety behaviours of professional drivers, compared with other explanatory variables (e.g. age, type of transport, working conditions), and to (2) Examine the influence of safety behaviours and other factors (e.g. age, mileage, type of transport) on self-reported crash involvement. The study indicates a relationship between national road safety culture, road safety behaviour and crash involvement, that could be developed further to help explain differences in national road safety records. 

SaferAfrica Project has been awarded the prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2019 as recognition for establishing a Dialogue Platform between Africa and Europe focusing on road safety management. SaferAfrica was an EU Horizons 2020 research project (2016-2019) relying on a rich and multilevel governance inspired by a common goal: make African roads safer. NTUA contributed actively by developing the African Road Safety Observatory as a core component of the Dialogue Platform. 

SafetyCube project has been awarded the prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2019 as recognition for its innovative open-access web-based Road Safety Decision Support System (DSS) that enables policy-makers and stakeholders to select and implement the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities in Europe and worldwide. SafetyCube (Safety CaUsation, Benefits and Efficiency) was an EU Horizon 2020 research project (2015-2018). NTUA contributed actively at all phases of the SafetyCube project and was in charge of the development of the SafetyCube DSS. 

The November 2019 issue of NRSO Road Safety Update is the 100^th newsletter of the NTUA Road Safety Observatory and we celebrate it with a dedicated infographic, proud having contributed to the very important road casualties reduction in Europe this period.  With our first NRSO newsletter back on January 2007 and then more systematically with monthly newsletters since September 2011, we support systematically the international road safety community with key road safety knowledge and data, with ultimum objective safe traffic everywhere and for all.  

During 30th POLIS Conference on 28 November 2019, in Brussels, Belgium, the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) declared its full support and signed the City declaration “The new Paradigm for Safe City Streets” including 10 principles to be recognized by EU cities, as necessary for sound and effective action for traffic safety.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Long-term association of road accidents and weather conditions in European cities” was recently presented by Areti Thanasko. The aim of this Diploma Thesis was to investigate the long–term correlation between road accidents and weather conditions in European cities.  On that purpose, a database containing average monthly temperature and precipitation data for every city – as well as the monthly number of road accidents for the period 1991-2017 was developed. The application of the models concluded that increase of precipitation and temperature results at increase of road accidents. For the group of south cities, the impact of weather conditions in road accidents is found more severe. For each time period, the rain has a negative impact on accidents, although their correlation is positive. Furthermore, temperature increase due to climate change slows down the improvement of road safety.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “The traffic and safety effect of smartphone texting and web surfing during driving in cities using a driving simulator” was recently presented by Maria Oikonomou. Driving profiles of 36 young people were collected through a driving simulator experiment while a survey was conducted to collect the characteristics and driving habits of the participants. A key finding is that web surfing and texting while driving cause: increased accident probability and decreased mean speed and its variation, headway distance and its variation, as well as steering wheel variation. Finally, the use of the Google Maps application has the greatest impact on mean speed variation, while the use of Facebook App while driving has the greatest impact on mean headway distance variation and mean steering wheel variation.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Analysis of pedestrians distracted behaviour talking on mobile phone” was recently presented by Dimitra Typa. The aim of this Diploma Thesis was to investigate the impact of hand-held cell phone conversation on pedestrians’ traffic and safety behaviour, when crossing signalized intersections. An outdoor-environment experiment, through video recording, was conducted in real road conditions, in three signalized intersections at the centre of Athens for the purpose of comparing the behaviour of distracted and non-distracted pedestrians. The results of the models’ application demonstrated that distraction caused by hand-held cell phone conversation had a negative impact on pedestrians’ main traffic and safety characteristics, since, in general, mobile use not only decreases pedestrians’ speed but also increases their probability of being involved in an accident with an oncoming vehicle.  

A paper titled “Driving Safety Efficiency Benchmarking Using Smartphone Data” authored by Dimitrios Tselentis, Eleni Vlahogianni, and George Yannis is now published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. This paper aims to provide a methodological framework for the comparative evaluation of driving safety efficiency based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The analysis considers each driver as a Decision-Making Unit (DMU) and aims to provide a relative safety efficiency measure to compare different drivers based on their driving performance. The proposed methodological framework is tested on data from fifty-six (56) drivers during a 7-months period. Findings help distinguish the most efficient drivers from those that are less efficient. Most common inefficient driving practices are identified (aggressive, risky driving, etc.) and driving behaviour is comparatively evaluated and analyzed. 

The 1st newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project BE OPEN was recently released highlighting some of the project latest news, the first BE OPEN workshop entitled “Open Science in Transport: Challenges and Way forward“ and key project achievements. The BE OPEN newsletter aims to keep you informed about the project’s progress, news, events and results. 

You can also sign up to the BE OPEN newsletter in the following link: 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a short video supporting that it is time for the EU to move from dozens of different drink driving limits to one that everyone can remember easily: Zero, despite the fact that every individual responds to alcohol differently. 

The third edition of Road Safety Manual (RSM) developed by the World Road Association (PIARC) is designed to help countries at every stage of infrastructure development to fulfil road safety objectives. It is aligned with key pillars for the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020: Pillar 1: Road Safety Management, Pillar 2: Safer Roads and Mobility, Pillar 4: Safer Road Users. This comprehensive resource builds on the broad range of knowledge and experience provided by PIARC in the previous editions. It includes new thinking on road safety and offers a clear argument on why adopting a Safe System approach is crucial for all countries. 

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 Federation of Road Victims (FEVR) along with the European Commission – DG MOVE and the WHO Regional Office for Europe commemorated the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims on 18 November 2019, in Brussels, Belgium. From 1995, FEVR observed this day, as European Day of Remembrance, that was adopted by the United Nations in 2005, and is dedicated to remembering the many millions killed or injured in road crashes and their families and communities, as well as to pay tribute to the dedicated emergency crews, police and medical professionals who daily deal with the traumatic aftermath of road death and injury. The slogan of 2019 was: “LIFE IS NOT A CAR PART”.    

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. ETSC stresses the need for stronger measures including legislation and a wider coverage of existing and emerging road safety issues that will be essential to addressing the recent stagnation in progress on reducing road deaths in the EU.