NRSO Road Safety

NTUA – Road Safety Research Challenges Workshop, Athens, May 2023 NTUA within the framework of the Seventh UN Global Road Safety Week  organised with great success a Scientific Workshop titled “Road Safety Research Challenges” which was held in Athens (and online) on May 19th, 2023. The objective of this Workshop was to highlight through an intensive flow of presentations the main findings and challenges of key road safety research projects carried out within the NTUA Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering.   Click here for the 20 NTUA presentations...

NTUA Road Safety Observatory excellent performance in global rankings, September 2023 Global University Rankings demonstrate excellent scientific performance of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), our Civil Engineering School and our Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering, along with the NTUA Road Safety Observatory. This is the result of NTUA Scientists' long standing culture of persistence to our fundamental research principles: a) Scientific Excellence with advanced and innovative technology concepts, b) Research with significant Impact to society and economy, c) State-of-the-art organisation for highly efficient Implementation, d) Systematic international Cooperations. Great thanks to the highly dedicated NTUA Road Safety Research Team and to all our European and worldwide partners. And the exciting journey towards scientific excellence continues …

Latest Developments

LEVITATE – Policy Support Tool for CCAM impacts, July 2022 The LEVITATE Policy Support Tool (PST) is publicly available as developed within EU Horizons 2020 research project LEVITATE with the active contribution of NTUA. The LEVITATE PST is the go-to, one-stop-shop to support decisions on Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) related interventions. It is designed as an open access, web-based system that provides interested users with access to LEVITATE methodologies and results. It contains Forecasting, Backcasting and CBA estimator capabilities as well as a rich Knowledge module serving as background and scientific repository supporting the ensemble of quantitative and qualitative estimates produced from the PST.   The NTUA presentation was titled LEVITATE – Policy Support Tool

ITF/OECD – Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety, October 2022 The International Transport Forum (ITF) has published a new Report titled Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety: 2022 Update. This Report tracks the progress in reducing the number of road traffic fatalities and serious injuries in cities between 2010 and 2020. It is a unique combination of traffic safety data collected in 32 cities participating in the ITF Safer City Streets network and compares trends in urban and national road safety.

PIARC – Boosting Road Safety in LMICs: Focus on Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), July 2023 The World Road Association – PIARC implemented an ambitious PIARC Knowledge Exchange project, aiming at sharing knowledge about road safety, with the active contribution of NTUA, especially within Low and Middle Income Countries with limited resources but also in more developed economies with different needs and priorities. The theme of this month refers to Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), as presented by the PIARC Technical Committee 3.1 member Lawrence Chauke. Throughout the year, PIARC will focus on the Safe System approach, addressing safe roads and roadsides, safe road users, safe vehicles and safe speeds.

PIARC - Boosting Road Safety in LMICs: Focus on Data, June 2023 The World Road Association – PIARC  implemented an ambitious PIARC Knowledge Exchange project, aiming at sharing knowledge about road safety, with the active contribution of NTUA, especially within Low and Middle Income Countries with limited resources but also in more developed economies with different needs and priorities. The theme of this month refers to Data, as presented by the PIARC Technical Committee 2.4 "Road Network Operation/ ITS" Secretary Kaouther Machta. Throughout the year, PIARC will focus on the Safe System approach, addressing safe roads and roadsides, safe road users, safe vehicles and safe speeds.

Our Publications

International Transport Forum Summit, Leipzig, May 2023 NTUA Professor George Yannis has contributed actively at the ITF 2023 Summit held in Leipzig, Germany, on 24-26 May 2023, on key discussions on the design of safe and equitable future transport systems for all. In his presentation on Social Cost-Benefit Analysis of Key Urban Mobility Policies in Athens demonstrated the high usefulness of the social Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) for the promotion of key urban mobility and safety policies, including comprehensive appraisal of externalities (impact on safety, environment, congestion, etc.). The policies investigated concerned City-wide Speed Limit 30km/h, Congestion Charging Schemes, Ridesharing Services and Telematics Insurance Schemes, which were proved highly beneficial for the society welfare.

IRF – Vision Zero for the Balkans, May 2023 NTUA Professor George Yannis has contributed actively at the "Vision Zero for the Balkans" Road Safety Conference organized by IRF in Belgrade, Serbia, on 15 May 2023, with the presentation titled "Network Wide Road Safety Assessments to diagnose road safety risk". Some of the key issues of this conference are to promote  the uptake of “Vision Zero” policies and make a compelling case for safety investment, focus on risk factors and road deficiencies that lead to injuries among vulnerable road users and advance regional cooperation.

ICTR2023 – 11th International Congress on Transportation Research, Heraklion, September 2023 The Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT/CERTH) and the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) co-organized the 11th International Congress on Transportation Research (ICTR 2023), which was held on 20-22 September 2023 in Heraklion, Greece. The spotlight theme of the 2023 Congress was "Clean and Accessible to All Multimodal Transport". Special focus was given to innovative and sustainable traffic safety concepts in Greece and worldwide. Click here for all NTUA presentations...

A Review of Surrogate Safety Measures Uses in Historical Crash Investigations, May 2023 A paper titled “A Review of Surrogate Safety Measures Uses in Historical Crash Investigations” authored by Dimitrios Nikolaou, Apostolos Ziakopoulos and George Yannis, has been published in Sustainability. On that purpose, 34 studies were examined, providing insights on the different types of SSMs collected under real road environment conditions, the way they are collected, their connection with specific road crash types, and the type of the developed statistical models are examined and discussed. Particular focus is also placed on the temporal dimension of the collection period of both SSMs and road crashes. Based on the classification performance metrics of the developed models, it was found that the Random Forests classifier outperformed the other developed classifiers in terms of predicting crash risk levels of the considered motorway segments.

Analysis of the acceptance and cost benefit analysis of reducing the speed limit to 80 km/h on the interurban road network in Greece, March 2023 An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Analysis of the acceptance and cost benefit analysis of reducing the speed limit to 80 km/h on the interurban road network in Greece” was recently presented by Konstantinos Makrydakis. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, a special questionnaire was developed and answered by 408 travellers, from different parts of Greece, based on the stated preference method for 10 hypothetical scenarios with variations of the variables travel time, fuel consumption and probability of road accident with serious injury. The analysis calculated the investment costs and the impacts on traffic, road safety and the environment expressed in monetary units and showed that the reduction of the speed limit to 80 km/h on the interurban road network in Greece is considered to be economically very positive for the society, with a positive economic Net Present Value (ENPV=€170.7 million) and a high ERR (ERR=39.1%).

PHOEBE – 1st Newsletter, May 2023 The PHOEBE research project has recently released the PHOEBE 1st Newsletter, which provides information on the latest outcomes of the EU-funded ‘Predictive Approaches for Safer Urban Environment’ (PHOEBE) project aiming to increase the road safety of vulnerable road users, especially those who use active mobility and e-scooters. Special focus is given to the assessment of current transport pilot plans in Athens, carried out by NTUA.

i-DREAMS – 7th Newsletter, April 2023 The Horizon 2020 project i-DREAMS (smart Driver Environment Assessment and Monitoring System) released its 7th Newsletter, presenting the main accomplishments of the project, through creative solutions and risk mitigation strategies, exploiting state-of-the art findings on driver safety tolerance zone. The Newsletter presents the main results and the key findings from field trials and simulator experiments in Belgium, Germany, UK, Greece and Portugal and recommendations are also provided. The management approach, the communication and dissemination strategy as well as the ethical challenges tackled are presented through 37 deliverables, technical reports, interviews.

Upcoming Events

PIARC – XXVIIth World Road Congress, Prague, October 2023 The World Road Association (PIARC)  is organising the XXVIIth World Road Congress, which will be held on 2-6 October 2023, in Prague. The theme of the congress is "Together on the road again" and will provide a unique opportunity to discuss in depth all subjects related to road infrastructures and road transport, with safety being one of the Congress key topics. The program includes ministerial sessions, 60 technical sessions covering all key aspects and topics of road infrastructure, valuable poster sessions, various specialised workshops, foresight sessions and much more.  A special workshop on “Boosting Sustainable Road Safety Solutions in LMICs” is also foreseen.

POLIS – Polis Annual Conference, Leuven, November 2023 POLIS, the European Cities Network, is organising the 2023 Annual Polis Conference, which will take place in Leuven, on 29-30 November 2023. The POLIS Annual Conference is Europe’s leading sustainable urban mobility event, providing an opportunity for cities and regions to showcase their transport achievements , including recent safety developments, to a large audience of mobility experts, practitioners, and decision-makers from both the public and private sector.

Transport Research Arena (TRA), Dublin, April 2024 The European Commission and the An Roinn Iompair (ARI) together with the European Transport Research Platforms ACARE, ALICE, CEDR, ECTP, ERRAC, ERTRAC, ETRA and Waterborne will organise the Transport Research Arena Conference (TRA2024) which will take place in Dublin, on 15-18 April 2024. The pillars of the Conference will be the safe & inclusive transport, the sustainable mobility of people and goods, the efficient & resilient systems and the collaborative digitalisation regarding the European Transport Research and Innovation and the cooperation of Europe with other continents.