Road Safety outside Urban Areas in the EU is highlighted at the Traffic Safety Basic Facts 2015 available at the European Road Safety Observatory of the European Commission. These Traffic Safety Basic Facts contain a comprehensive series of statistical tables with the latest available data from the CARE database of the European Commission. More than 201.000 people were killed in accidents on roads outside urban areas – excluding motorways – in the EU between 2004 and 2013. This number represents 55% of all road fatalities in the EU. Fatalities outside urban areas were reduced by 46% over the last decade (from 26.199 in 2004 to 14.029 in 2013).  

A paper titled ‘Impact of texting on young drivers’ behaviour and safety in urban and rural roads through a simulation experiment‘ co-authored by George Yannis,Alexandra Laiou, Panagiotis Papantoniou and Charalambos Christoforou is now published in Journal of Safety Research. A driving simulator experiment was carried out in which 34 young participants drove in different driving scenarios; specifically, driving in good weather, in raining conditions, in daylight and in night were examined. Lognormal regression methods were used to investigate the influence of texting as well as various other parameters on the mean speed and mean reaction time. Binary logistic methods were used to investigate the influence of texting use as well as various other parameters in the probability of an accident. It appears that texting leads to statistically significant decrease of the mean speed and increase of the mean reaction time in urban and rural road environment. Simultaneously, it leads to an increased accident probability due to driver distraction and delayed reaction at the moment of the incident. It appeared that drivers using mobile phones with a touch screen present different driving behavior with respect to their speed, however, they had an even higher probability of being involved in an accident.  

Road Safety outside Urban Areas in the EU is highlighted at the Traffic Safety Basic Facts 2012 available at the Road Safety Knowledge System of the DACOTA project within the framework of the European Road Safety Observatory of the European Commission. 14.540  people were killed in traffic accidents on roads outside urban areas in the EU countries in 2010. Fatalities on roads outside urban areas were reduced by 44% between 2001 and 2010. 

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Simulation of texting impact on young drivers’ behaviour and safety in urban and rural road‘   was presented by Charalambos Christoforou in July 2012. An experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out, in which all the participants drove in different driving scenarios. Lognormal regression methods were used to investigate the influence of texting as well as various other parameters on the mean speed and mean reaction time. Binary logistic methods were used to investigate the influence of text messaging use as well as various other parameters in the probability of an accident. It appears that text messaging leads to statistically significant decrease of the mean speed and increase the mean reaction time in urban and interurban road environment and simultaneously leads to an increase of accident’s probability, perhaps due to distraction of driver attention and as a result of the delayed reaction time at the moment of the incident. 

Road Safety outside Urban Areas in the EU is highlighted at the Traffic Safety Basic Facts 2011 recently released at the European Road Safety Observatory of the European Commission as prepared by the DACOTA project. More than 16.000  people were killed in traffic accidents on roads outside urban areas in the EU countries in 2009. Fatalities on roads outside urban areas were reduced by 40% between 2000 and 2009. 

Road Safety outside Urban Areas in the EU is highlighted at the Traffic Safety Basic Facts 2010 recently released at the European Road Safety Observatory of the European Commission as prepared by the DACOTA project. More than 20.500  people were killed in traffic accidents on roads outside urban areas in the EU countries in 2008. Fatalities on roads outside urban areas were reduced by 36% between 1999 and 2008. 

In EU-23, only 6% of road fatalities occurred in motorways. 56% of road fatalities occurred on non motorway rural roads. In Greece, more road fatalities occurred on urban than rural roads.

59% of road accidents and fatalities outside built-up area occurred on national roads. More than three quarters of road accidents and 44% of fatalities occurred inside built-up area. However, accident severity is 5 times higher outside built-up areas in total. 

In October 2010, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning road safety in rural roads. At least 21,500 people lost their lives on rural roads other than motorways in the EU im 2009. Luxembourg, Portugal and France achieved the highest annual reductions of more than 9% on average since 2001. Greece’s annual percentage reduction is almost the same with EU average reductions (-5%). 

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Investigation of the impact of road lighting on the frequency and the severity of road accidents’   was presented by Nikolaos Mitzalis in July 2010.This diploma thesis has been awarded with the Ecocity award 2012. Suitably processed data were used from the database of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and lognormal regression models were developed. The application of these models led to the investigation of the influence of road lighting and other parameters such as weather conditions, accident type, vehicle type etc. on the number of casualties and injuries. It appears that road lighting contributes to the reduction of the number of accidents and their severity and that this influence increases with the increase of the severity of the accidents.