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Dimitris Nikolaou has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled: Machine learning-based road crash risk assessment fusing infrastructure, traffic and driver behaviour data, under the supervision of NTUA Prof. George Yannis.
Two distinct databases were developed; the former concerned motorway
segments and the latter concerned urban and interurban road segments.
Several statistical models (e.g. Logistic and Negative Binomial
Regression, Hierarchical Clustering, Spatial Error Model) and Machine
Learning Algorithms (e.g. Decision Tree, Random Forest, K-Nearest
Neighbour and Support Vector Machine) were implemented. The results
revealed that crash frequency on
motorway segments is positively correlated with the traffic volume, the
segment length, the number of harsh accelerations and the number of
harsh brakings per segment trips. It was also concluded
that geometrical and behavioural parameters can be combined to
meaningfully conduct road safety analysis spatially and proactively, as
they are highly correlated with harsh braking Surrogate Safety
Measures.   |
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Latest Developments
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The 92nd General Assembly of the United Nations
urged accelerated action to reduce deaths and injuries from traffic
crashes worldwide by implementing the Global Plan for the Decade of
Action for Road Safety 2021–2030. Precisely, it urged Member States and
relevant actors to accelerate and scale up efforts to implement the
Global Plan, making road safety a political priority and ensuring its relevance in the broader sustainable development agenda.
Furthermore, the General Assembly invited Member States to consider
adopting comprehensive legislation on key risk factors, including the
non-use of seat belts, child restraints and helmets, and driving under
the influence.  |
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently published the 2023 Status Report on Road Safety for the Africa Region.
According to this Report, road traffic death rates during the period
2010-2021 have increased significantly in the African region, with 17% increase in road-related fatalities,
despite being home to only 15% of the world’s population, and 3% of its
vehicles. Conversely, global rates fell by 5% during the same period. WHO
recommends concerted efforts to implement a range of interventions, in
order to strengthen national road safety strategies in Africa. |
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The Horizon 2020 research project SHOW (SHared automation Operating models for Worldwide adoption) has recently released the SHOW Dashboard with the active contribution of NTUA. The SHOW Dashboard provides a unified view of all SHOW Autonomous Vehicles pilot sites in a cohesive and user-friendly interface, in terms of performance monitoring and visualisation of real-time vehicle information.
This Dashboard enables access to various Autonomous Vehicle (AV) data
to optimise operations and get an insight of the impacts of the fleet
operation on the environment, traffic flow or safety. Beyond the SHOW
project, the information panel of the Dashboard contains available data,
which are available and accessible to the wider AV-interested
audience. |
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Statistics Corner
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The European Commission published a breakdown of fatalities in the EU by
road user and (other) “main vehicle” involved in the crash. The
matrix shows clearly that fatalities overwhelmingly occur in collisions
involving cars, and the need to increase the protection of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists. EU
policies are already evolving in this direction with the new mandatory
safety measures introduced by the General Safety Regulation focused on
VRUs. |
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The Subjective Safety & Risk Perception Thematic Report of the European Survey of Road Users’ Safety Attitudes (ESRA) has been published with the active contribution of NTUA, containing a
wealth of information on road safety in 39 countries across Europe,
America and Asia-Oceania, based on the ESRA3 survey. This Thematic ESRA3
Report describes the perceived levels of safety when using different transport modes and the assessment of various risk factors in traffic (e.g.
alcohol, speed, fatigue) regarding their contribution to crashes.
Furthermore, it includes comparisons amongst the participating
countries, as well as results in relation to age and gender. |
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Our Publications
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The Transport Community
organised with great success a hybrid event about the Capacity Building
on Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale 3+ in Belgrade, on 21 June 2024.
During this conference, the conclusions of the SafetyCube project
regarding the collection of serious injury data were presented.
Furthermore, the MAIS3+ database and several best practices from EU
Member States were discussed. NTUA Professor George Yannis actively contributed with the following presentation:
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A paper titled "Exploiting Surrogate Safety Measures and Road Design Characteristics towards Crash Investigations in Motorway Segments" authored by Dimitris Nikolaou, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Katerina Deliali, Yannis Handanos, Christos Karadimas, Giorgos Kostoulas, Elina Frantzola and George Yannis has been published in Infrastructures.
For this analysis, a database containing data on injury and
property-damage-only crashes, road design characteristics, and SSMs of
668 segments was compiled and utilized. The results of the developed
negative binomial regression model revealed that crash
frequency is positively correlated with the average annual daily
traffic volume, the length of the segment, harsh accelerations, and
harsh braking.  |
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A paper titled “Safety evaluation via conflict classification during automated shuttle bus service operations” authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Maria Oikonomou, Marios Sekadakis and George Yannis has been published in European Transport Research Review. To investigate impacts of autonomous shuttle bus services and to further examine their operational speed, the microscopic simulation method was performed. By
analyzing the trajectory data extracted from microsimulation, traffic
conflicts were identified and further analyzed by developing
Mixed-Effects Multinomial Logit Regression models (ME-MLMs) in order to associate conflict type taking into account network characteristics as well as traffic conditions. The
analysis yielded several significant findings that provide quantitative
measurements and assessments of the effects observed, enabling a better
understanding of the safety implications associated with the widespread
adoption of automated services. |
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An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “The effect of fatigue on driver behavior in rural environment using driver simulator” was recently presented by Georgios Tziouvaras. To
achieve this objective, a driving simulator experiment was carried out
and data from 35 participants were collected. Linear and binomial
logistic regression models were developed. Results indicated that fatigue
driving increases the average speed and reaction time of drivers,
reduces their distance from the vehicle ahead and increases crash
probability. It was also revealed that under conditions
of high traffic load, lower average driver speeds, reduced reaction
times and increased crash probability were observed.
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The Horizon 2020 research project SHOW (SHared automation Operating models for Worldwide adoption) has recently released the SHOW 9th Newsletter. The Newsletter provides information on the latest outcomes of the project. The SHOW Dashboard brings
all the pilot sites in a cohesive and user-friendly interface. The
combined efforts have brought real-life pilots to over 15 cities across
Europe, paving the way for some countries to embark on their inaugural
operations with shared Automated Vehicles. SHOW’s aim is to enhance urban mobility and automation by understanding people’s needs. |
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Upcoming Events
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The International Road Federation (IRF) in cooperation with the Turkish Road Association are organizing the IRF World Congress 2024 in Istanbul, Turkey, on 15-18 October 2024.
This conference with theme "Connecting to Empower Mobility: Roads as
Enablers of a Sustainable Future for All" will serve as a platform for
global leaders, industry experts, academia, and diverse public and
private stakeholders to engage in insightful discussions and
collaborative efforts, addressing pivotal issues and exploring
innovations within the road and mobility sectors. Registrations are
open here.  |
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The International Cooperation on Theories and Concepts in Traffic safety (ICTCT) together with the Traffic and Transportation Safety Lab of Delft University of Technology are organising the 36th Conference which will be held in The Hague, Netherlands, on 17-18 October 2024.
This conference with theme “Inclusive and interdisciplinary road safety
research” will serve as a platform for global leaders, industry
experts, academia and diverse public and private stakeholders to engage
in insightful discussions and collaborative efforts. Particular emphasis
will be given to vulnerable road users, micromobility, road
infrastructure design, innovative research methodologies and inclusive
road safety policies. Participants can register here. |
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The 9th Road Safety & Simulation International Conference 2024 (RSS2024) hosted by the Kentucky Transportation Center will take place in Lexington, Kentucky, on 28-31 October 2024, under the theme “Improving Decisions Through Safety and Simulation Tools”. The Conference aims to
improve upon the existing knowledge in the area of road safety and
contribute to reducing the number of crash fatalities and injuries
occurring worldwide, through the dissemination of innovative research
and applications. Participants can register here. |
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POLIS, the European Cities Network, is organising the 2024 Annual Polis Conference, which will take place in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, on 27-28 November 2024. 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. Urban Road Safety is a key conference priority.
Participants can register here. | | | |
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