NRSO Road Safety Update

Review and ranking of crash risk factors related to the road infrastructure, 2019 A paper titled “Review and ranking of crash risk factors related to the road infrastructure” authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou, Ashleigh Filtness, Akis Theofilatos, Apostolis Ziakopoulos, Claire Quigley and George Yannis is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. This analysis was carried out within the SafetyCube project, which aimed to identify and quantify the effects of risk factors and measures related to behaviour, infrastructure or vehicles, and integrate the results in an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS). Synthesis of results was made through 39 ‘Synopses’ (including 4 original meta-analyses) on individual risk factors or groups of risk factors. This analysis allowed the ranking of infrastructure risk factors into three groups: risky (11 risk factors), probably risky (18 risk factors), and unclear (7 risk factors).   For full text just ask us by replying to this email. Latest Developments EU Reforms on Road Infrastructure Safety Management, 2019 The European Council reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on a proposal to strengthen road infrastructure management to reduce road fatalities and serious injuries. The reform will extend the scope of the current rules to motorways and other primary roads beyond the trans-European transport network (TEN-T). Furthermore, it introduces a network-wide road safety assessment, which is a snapshot of the entire road network covered by the Directive used to evaluate accident risk and the Authorities will use the findings to carry out more targeted road safety inspections or take direct remedial action. It will become mandatory to take systematic account of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users in road safety management procedures.   The draft directive amending directive on road infrastructure safety management is available:  ETSC – Reducing Speeding in Europe, 2019 The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 36th PIN Flash Report “Reducing Speeding in Europe“, with the active contribution of NTUA. The EU has the exclusive authority to set minimum safety standards for all new vehicles sold on the EU market. One of the main goals of this PIN Flash Report is to highlight the proposed standards which include mandatory fitment of overridable Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) on all cars, vans, buses and heavy goods vehicles. Research shows that this single technology could help to achieve a high level of compliance with speed limits and eventually cut road deaths by 20%.   ETSC – 7 SMART Ways of tackling Drink-Driving in Europe, 2019 The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a report titled “7 SMART Ways of tackling Drink-Driving in Europe”. The report aims to present the wide-ranging approaches used to tackle drink driving in Europe, including legislation (BAC limits, rehabilitation programmes for drink driving offenders), enforcement, technology (alcohol interlocks) campaigns and education.   Global Road Safety Facility – Annual Report, 2018 The Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), launched the GRSF 2018 Annual Report, highlighting its excellent record of delivery and long term funding for road safety. GRSF is a global partnership program administered by the World Bank, which was established in 2006 with a mission to help address the growing crisis of road traffic deaths and injuries in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).   SaferAfrica 4th Newsletter, 2019 The 4th 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 African “ownership” of the African Road Safety Observatory, Role for NGOs, SaferAfrica Thematic Factsheets and new resources.  Statistics Corner Greece continues with impressive ten-year road fatalities decrease, 2018 Road fatalities in Greece in 2018 presented, for second year in a row, a significant decrease (5.6%) compared to 2017 figures, according to recently published ELSTAT data. This significant decrease could be attributed not only to the fact that Greece is still under the effect of the economic crisis but also due to the fact that over the past two years, more than 500 km of new or upgraded motorways have replaced national roads with high road fatalities rates.  During the last decade, Greece presents the most impressive road safety improvement in the European Union, with a decrease of road fatalities of 56% and a decrease of serious injuries of 60%. The rate fatalities per million vehicles has decreased by 59% since 2008. Our Publications Open Science in Transport presentation at BeOpen, Brussels, 2019 Prof. George Yannis made a presentation about “Open Science in Transport” at the kick-off meeting of the BeOpen, Horizon 2020 project, which took place in Brussels in 14 February 2019.   BeOpen aims to create a common understanding on the practical impact of Open Science and to identify and put in place the mechanisms to make it a reality in transport research. Road Safety constitutes a major component of this Open Science in Transport initiative. 47th International Neuropsychological Society Annual Meeting, New York, 2019 The International Neuropsychological Society organised the 47th Annual Meeting which took place with great success in New York from February 20-23, 2019. The topics of the Meeting included clinical neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychiatry and internationally renowned, innovative, and pioneering scientists and clinicians from multiple disciplines gave very interesting presentations. NTUA actively contributed with the following interdisciplinary presentation merging two scientific domains – neuroscience and road safety:  Intraindividual variability within and across conditions in driving simulator measures of healthy drivers of different ages  Intraindividual variability within and across conditions in driving simulator measures of neurology patients and healthy drivers Modelling the economic impact of road accidents in Greece, 2018 A Diploma Thesis titled “Modelling the economic impact of road accidents in Greece” was presented by Eleftherios-Marios Kourtis in July 2018. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is the estimation of the human cost of road accidents based on the “Willingness-to-Pay” (WTP) methodology, and the identification of drivers attitudes towards the probability of getting involved in a road accident, using the “Stated Preference” method. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between the number of road accidents that a driver was involved so far and the annual amount that is willing to invest. Furthermore, based on the WTP methodology, the road accident fatality human cost in Greece was estimated at 1.761 million euros.   Events FEHRL – Infrastructure Research Meeting (FIRM19), Brussels, 2019 The FEHRL Infrastructure Research Meeting 2019 (FIRM19) will take place on 26-28 March 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. The theme is “On-Ramp to innovation: Let’s co-create together our future transport infrastructure“ and it coincides with the celebration of the 30th anniversary of FEHRL. The main stakeholders (EC, CEDR, PIARC, ERTRAC, ECTP) are expected to outline the vision for the future cross-modal transport infrastructure and its implementation plan.  TUM – International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport (Mobil.TUM), Munich, 2019 The Focus Area Mobility & Transportation Systems of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are organising the International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport (mobil.TUM 2019) which will take place on 11-12 September 2019, in Munich, Germany. The theme of the conference is Transportation Systems of the Future. Road safety will be one of the key discussion areas enabling inspiration from the latest innovations and exploring new directions for shaping the future of urban mobility and safety.  30th POLIS Conference – Brussels, 2019 The 2019 Polis Conference will take place on 27 and 28 November 2019, in Brussels, Belgium, organised by POLIS, the European Cities Network, celebrating the network’s 30th anniversary. The conference will provide an opportunity for cities, metropolitan areas and regions to showcase their transport achievements to a large audience, and for the wider transport community to engage with representatives of local and regional authorities on innovative transport solutions.  Transport Research Arena – Research Awards TRAVisions 2020 TRAVisions concerns two competitions for transport research awards to be announced in a prestigious award ceremony at the Transport Research Arena Conference on 27-30th April 2020 in Helsinki (abstract submission deadline: 30/06/2019):    TRAVisions 2020 Young Researcher Competition, an academic student competition with the goal of stimulating the interest among young researchers and students in the field of sustainable surface transport TRAVisions 2020 Senior Researcher Competition, a competition for senior researchers in the field of innovative surface transport concepts based on results only from EU-funded projects HIT/HITE/Hellastron – Road Safety Awards in Greece, 2019 The Road Safety Awards in Greece were established in 2018 by the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE), HELLASTRON and the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT). This year, two awards have been announced: the first one concerns the “Best Road Safety Young Researcher Publication” addressed to students, graduates, postgraduate, doctoral or postdoctoral researchers and the second one concerns the “Best Road Safety Action” addressed to Organisations and Institutes.