NRSO Road Safety Update - September 2018

African Road Safety Observatory is on line, 2018 The African Road Safety Observatory is now on line constituting a space for interaction to highlight the road safety needs in African countries, developed with the active contribution of NTUA. It is one of the main results of the SaferAfrica project funded by the European Commission Horizons 2020 Programme and includes various knowledge and tools, such as statistics, reports, fact sheets, knowledge resources and links and it is integrated with crowd-sourcing functions to facilitate the participation of experts and end-users, through an interactive Dialogue Platform.

NTUA Dpt of Transportation Planning and Engineering ranked 15th in Europe 2018 The Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) was ranked 15th in Europe and at 65th place worldwide among all Transportation Science & Technology Schools,  according to the ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) 2018.  NTUA road safety activities have contributed to this excellent performance. Accordingly, the NTUA Civil Engineering School was ranked 7th worldwide (3rd European) among all Civil Engineering Schools.

Latest Developments

EuroRAP – New report tackles the transition to automated vehicles on roads that cars can read, 2018 Serious crashes on inter-urban roads may be slashed by a quarter over the next 30-40 years with the introduction of automated vehicles. However, the journey may be far from easy, with a mixed fleet transition and vital need for roads that cars can read, according to recent Report released by EuroRAP. The Report, the third in the “Roads that Cars Can Read” series, examines the relationship between road infrastructure and safety for conventional and increasingly-autonomous vehicles (AVs) and provides a framework for infrastructure safety investment.   Other Reports in the series: “Roads that cars can read I: A consultation paper” – 2011 and “Roads that cars can read II: A quality standard for road markings and traffic signs on major rural roads” – 2013.

FEHRL – New Forever Open Road website launched, 2018 The new Forever Open Road website has been launched by FEHRL. The vision behind the Forever Open Road programme is to focuss on the best of existing technologies and the best of those to come. Many of the required solutions exist already from previous research, but are not (yet) implemented to their full potential; some innovations will be developed in the short-term, and others at an earlier stage of development with implementation in the longer term. Investigation on the untapped potential and the eventual barriers to their implementation will undoubtedly offer quick wins to the road operators.

SafetyCube – Road Safety DSS is live! – Newsletter August 2018 SafetyCube is a research project funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, in the domain of Road Safety. The latest SafetyCube newsletter is now available, highlighting the innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS) which is online already one year, enabling 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.

SaferAfrica 3rd Newsletter, 2018 The 3rd Newsletter of the African-European Dialogue Platform on Road Safety (SaferAfrica) Horizons 2020 project has been recently issued with the active contribution of NTUA. This edition highlights the newly born African Road Safety Observatory, the African RSO and includes also the SaferAfrica recommendations on the implementation of the African Road Safety Action Plan and an attempt to answer how can the African Road Safety Observatory help to improve road safety in Africa.

Our Publications

TUM/NTUA – 7th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation (hEART), Athens, 2018 The chair of Transportation System Engineering of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) co-organised the 7th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation (hEART), which took place with great success in September 5-7 2018 in Athens, Greece. hEART is an interdisciplinary research conference, covering all areas of transportation research, with a focus on quantitative methods and analysis of transport systems. The aim of the Symposium was to connect research in transport modelling, transport economics and transport policy with advanced practice.  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:    Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation of Selected Road Safety Measures    Exploring Weather Effects on Powered-Two-Wheeler Safety on Urban Arterials in Athens         European Transport Research in the Digital World

IRCOBI – International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury Europe Conference, Athens, 2018 The 2018 International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury Europe Conference took place with great success in Athens, Greece, on 12-14 September 2018. The focus of IRCOBI is on the avoidance and reduction of the severity of traffic accidents, with special emphasis on advanced safety technologies and the biomechanics of injury.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:   A preliminary analysis of in-depth accident data for powered two-wheelers and bicycles in Europe

10th International Conference on Urban Traffic Safety, Edmonton, 2018 The city of Edmonton organized the 10th Annual International Conference on Urban Traffic Safety, which took place with great success on 9-12 July, 2018 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Just as all road users feel the impact of traffic safety, the responsibility to promote traffic safety was shared by many disciplines. This multidisciplinary approach is more evident now than it ever was before. When jurisdictions and agencies refer to Vision Zero Action Plans and Road Safety Strategies, their underlying theme revolves around collaborating with all partners whether they are engineers, enforcement officers, medical professionals, planners, political leaders, or public health representatives.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Risks and Countermeasures for Road Traffic of the Elderly in Europe

Impact of economic, social and transport indicators on road safety during the crisis period in Europe, 2018 A Diploma Thesis titled “Impact of economic, social and transport indicators on road safety during the crisis period in Europe” was presented by Dimitrios Nikolaou in July 2018. For this analysis a database containing Human Development Index (HDI), suicides, passenger-kilometers and road fatalities for European states for 2006-2015 was developed. The results led to the conclusion that Human Development Index has the most important impact and its increase leads to road fatalities decrease. Moreover, the economy evolution effect on road accidents is more important than social and transport indicators. Expecially after the economic crisis, the impact of the economy is even higher. Concerning passenger-kilometers there is an increase in their impact on the number of road fatalities after the economic crisis.

Capturing the effects of texting on young drivers behaviour based on copula and Gaussian Mixture Models, 2018 A paper titled “Capturing the effects of texting on young drivers behaviour based on copula and Gaussian Mixture Models” authored by Loukas Dimitriou, Katerina Stylianou, and George Yannis is now published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. This research effort aims to investigate the impact of texting on young drivers’ behavior and safety based on data from driving simulator experiments, for different driving contexts, like motorways, urban and rural roads, during daytime and night, and for alternative weather conditions (‘clear sky’ and rain). GMMs application showed that drivers using mobile phones who were involved in a collision presented a different driving behavior compared to the drivers who were occupied but were not involved in a collision.

Point of View

How to improve road safety data in Africa? Road safety data collection and storage are critical for a series of procedures to improve road safety. However, capturing accurate and complete road safety data is a difficult and complex issue. The main problems faced when recording road accidents are the unclear determination of road accident location, insufficient or incorrect recording of information and insufficient accident coverage. More...

Upcoming Events

KFV/ETSC – Road Safety 2020+ The Future of Safe EU Road Transport, 2018 The Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Austrian Road Safety Board (KFV) and the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) are organizing a high level road safety conference in Vienna on 13 November 2018. The conference will feature a high level panel debate “Road safety 2020+: Challenges in Human Factors, Vehicles and Infrastructure”. Conference participants will be invited to discuss priority measures and actions of the upcoming EU and national road safety strategies with politicians, experts, researchers, NGOs and representatives of the EU institutions.

31st ICTCT Conference, Porto, 2018 The 31st ICTCT conference will be held in Porto, Portugal on 25-26th October 2018, under the main topic “On the track of future urban mobility: safety, human factors and technology”. The conference will be organised in close co-operation with the Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal. The objective of the conference is to support the understanding of future trends in urban mobility and their implications for the safety of all road users.

HITE/University of Thessaly – 7th Pan-hellenic Road Safety Conference, Larissa 2018 The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) and the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly are co-organizing the 7th pan-Hellenic Road Safety Conference, which will be held in Larissa, Greece on October 11-12, 2018. The main objectives of the Conference are to investigate and evaluate the level of road safety in Greece, as well as the efforts and innovations that are designed and implemented to improve road safety of drivers, vehicles and pedestrians in the Greek road network.   NRSO Road Safety  Ε.Μ.Π