ΝΕΑ από το Μετσόβειο Πολυτεχνείο:Παρατηρητήριο Οδικής Ασφάλειας.

 George Yannis 

A new road safety culture in Greece with the New Road Traffic Code, June 2025

The new Greek Road Traffic Code introduces city-wide 30 km/h speed limit in all urban streets of one or two directions with a single lane per direction, making Greece the second EU country after Spain to implement such a measure. A bold move of the Greek Government towards a new road safety culture, with a brand-new Road Traffic Code     with the active contribution of National Technical University of Athens: rationalising and simplifying penalties, linking them to offences' seriousness & magnitude, punishing drivers instead of vehicles, especially recidivists, introducing two-wheelers filtering & advance stopping zones, expanding calm driving with city-wide 30km/h speed limits, and getting ready for wide deployment of cameras and fines digital management.

ITF – IRTAD Road Safety Dashboard, June 2025 The International Road Traffic Safety Analysis and Data (IRTAD) Group of  the International Transport Forum (ITF) has recently launched a new and highly useful interactive Road Safety Dashboard, showcasing up-to-date crash and mortality data from 35 IRTAD member countries. This Dashboard is exploiting the long-standing IRTAD database, with data collected directly from relevant national data providers. This data includes county strategies and targets, road fatality data from 2013 to 2023 with country comparisons and country profiles with road fatalities by user group and mortality rate by age.

Latest Developments

European Commission – Personal Mobility Devices Thematic Report, December 2024 The European Commission with the active contribution of NTUA, SWOV, VIAS Institute and KFV has published at the European Road Safety Observatory, the Personal Mobility Devices Thematic Report which mainly refers to the safety of electric scooters. This Thematic Report highlights that a high proportion of crashes with a PMD are caused by falls, that can lead to common head injuries and by increasing helmet use would prevent these injuries. Moreover, a series of specific countermeasures are suggested, such as an e-scooters ban from pavements, a lower 30 km/h limit in urban areas and training motor vehicle users to be prepared to interact with PMDs is equally important for micro-mobility safety.

European Commission – More safe and secure parking for professional drivers is needed, April 2025 The Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) of the European Commission recently published a Report to address the critical need for Safe and Secure Parking Areas (SSPAs) for professional drivers across the European Union, focusing on their availability, security standards, and development potential. This Report highlights persistent challenges in the road transport sector, including driver shortages, inadequate parking infrastructure, and security concerns, which hinder the sector’s operational efficiency and driver well-being. To address this issue, the Study recommends strategic investments, including the rapid upgrade and certification of existing parking areas that already meet the required safety and security standards. Furthermore, this Report highlights that improved connectivity and digitalisation are essential drivers for making SSPAs more accessible and attractive.

EIT Urban Mobility Academic Research Board Annual Report, June 2025 EIT Urban Mobility has just published the EIT Urban Mobility Academic Research Board Annual Report: Strategic Research Priorities and Gaps, with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report outlines key challenges in urban mobility across Europe and highlights five core priority areas: economic productivity, resilience and adaptation, decarbonization, health and safety, and accessibility and inclusion. The Report presents a high-level perspective on knowledge gaps and future research priorities which are examined in the context of societal goals, systemic pressures, and critical policy levers, bringing together leading researchers from across Europe and beyond.

Statistics Corner

European Commission – Cyclists Facts and Figures Report, May 2024 The European Commission with the active contribution of NTUA, SWOV and KFV has published at the European Road Safety Observatory, the Cyclists Facts and Figures Report which refers to cyclist fatalities on EU roads. According to this Report, in contrast to the number of fatalities in crashes with other modes of transport, the number of cyclists killed on EU roads has remained at more or less the same level for the past decade: since 2012 a decrease of -3%, since 2019 a decrease of -1%. In 2022, half of all cyclist fatalities (50%) were cyclists aged 65 years or older on average and more than half of cyclist fatalities occurred in crashes on urban roads (57%), 42% on rural roads and 1% on motorways.

Eurostat – Progress Report on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the EU, June 2024 Eurostat has recently released a progress Report titled ‘Sustainable development in the European Union - monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context - 2024 edition’. This publication provides readers with a statistical overview of the EU’s progress towards its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Based on the assessment of the past five years of available data, the EU made progress towards most of the SDGs, while it fell slightly behind in a few goals. Specifically for road safety, the EU road safety policy framework 2021–2030 and Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy aim to reduce deaths and serious injuries on the road by 50% by 2030.

Our Publications

hEART2025 – 13th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation, Munich, June 2025 The 13th Symposium of European Association for Research in Transportation (hEART2025) took place with great success in Munich, on 10-12 June 2025.  The Symposium offered an opportunity for in depth discussion in all scientific methods and analyses in transport.  NTUA actively contributed with the following papers, posters and presentations:   The use of Graph Neural Networks for Clustering in Road Safety Analysis   Classifying Vehicle Cornering Behavior using Mobile Sensor Data   Predictive Modeling of Pedestrian Violations Using Ensemble Learning: A Case Study at an Urban Intersection in Athens, Greece   Preferences of Public Transport Passengers Towards Contactless Card Payments – The Case of Greece   Driver and road environment assessment for identifying Safety Tolerance Zone using machine learning techniques

SWOV – Trendline 2025 Conference, The Hague, June 2025 The Dutch Institute for Road Safety (SWOV) organized with great success the Trendline 2025 Conference which took place in The Hague, Netherlands on 10-11 June 2025, a key event for professionals working with road safety data, policy, and innovation. This Conference presented the results of the initial road safety KPIs, compared these with the Baseline values, discussed the methodologies for the new KPIs, and showed how KPIs can be used to support road safety policies.    NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:  KPI Speed  KPI Alternative Speeding Indicators KPI Enforcement of Traffic Regulations

ITF/Eurostat – Workshop on Promoting Data-Driven Decision-Making, online, May 2025 ITF together with Eurostat organized with great success the Workshop on Promoting Data-Driven Decision-Making which took place online, on 15 May 2025. The main objective of this Workshop was to promote data-driven decision-making and enhance statistical and data analytics capacity among statisticians in National Statistics Institutions and Other National Authorities, policymakers, transport authorities, researchers, academics, and industry stakeholders in Southeast Europe for effectively managing urban mobility performance. NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Implementing city-wide 30 km/h speed limit

George Yannis Podcast – Steady pace wins the race, June 2025 At a recent podcast in 4NewMobility Leadership Talk, NTUA Professor George Yannis provided a technical conversation, hosted by Astrid Rohles, about 30 km/h speed zones which turned into something much bigger: a vision for healthier, safer and more human cities. He emphasized that speeding remains the norm in urban mobility, endangering lives, discouraging active travel and fueling pollution. From empirical results across 17 European cities to his personal 30 Marathons in 30 months campaign, Prof. Yannis made a passionate and data-driven case for a European-wide roll-out of this low-cost, high-impact measure.  The solution? A coordinated European approach: Make 30 km/h the default in urban areas Support cities with infrastructure redesign Pair soft nudges with smart enforcement Communicate, measure and repeat Steady pace wins the race … in Marathons and in Mobility, while sustainability is earned by avoiding speeding. Full article and related audio-podcast are now available.

Analyzing the safety effects of different operating speeds for an autonomous shuttle bus service, March 2025 A paper titled Analyzing the safety effects of different operating speeds for an autonomous shuttle bus service authored by Maria Oikonomou, Marios Sekadakis, Christos Katrakazas and George Yannis has been published in Traffic Safety Research. This study utilizes microscopic simulation analysis in order to quantify the impact of road safety of an automated shuttle bus service within traffic. In the traffic network of Villaverde, Madrid, several scenarios were simulated using the Aimsun software considering the various CAV MPRs and the different operational speeds of the service, namely 15, 30, and 45 km/h. The analysis revealed that the conflict frequency is lower when the shuttle bus operates at 45 or 30 km/h compared to 15 km/h, with the 45 km/h speed showing the largest reduction. This reduction in conflicts is probably due to the shuttle bus adapting more easily to the average traffic speed and is more synchronized with traffic flow. The current study establishes a solid relationship for the conflict frequency of AV shuttles enabling stakeholders to optimize road safety towards a future of automated traffic.

Predicting driver behaviour in a cross-country naturalistic driving study using machine learning techniques, March 2025 A NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Predicting driver behaviour in a cross-country naturalistic driving study using machine learning techniques” was recently presented by Giannis Roukos. For this reason, valuable data on driver behavior were collected through a driving experiment conducted under real-world conditions in Belgium and the United Kingdom. In the initial analysis, the importance of the variables was calculated using the “Random Forest” algorithm, based on which nine input variables were selected for further analysis. Findings suggest that the average speed of the vehicle was identified was the most significant variable, while sudden driving events, including both harsh acceleration and harsh braking, were found to significantly influence the classification of driving behavior as dangerous.

Upcoming Events

ESRA – 10 Years Event of Global Road Safety Insights and Impact, Brussels, June 2025 The European Survey of Road users’ safety Attitudes (ESRA) together with VIAS Institute are organizing the ESRA: 10 years event of global road safety insights and impact which will take place in Brussels, Belgium on 24 June 2025. This event is a unique opportunity to reflect on the evolution of the ESRA initiative and its impact on road safety policy. Key findings from 10 years of research will be presented, unveiling a dedicated report and the new ESRA dashboard, and will be explored how these insights can drive future improvements in road safety. Furthermore, ESRA4 will be introduced, the next phase in the mission to create safer roads through data-driven strategies. Programme can be found here.

ETSC – 19th Annual Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) Report, June 2025 The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) is organizing the 2025 ETSC Road Safety Performance Index Conference which will take place in Brussels, Belgium on 24 June 2025. ETSC will present the findings of the PIN Annual Report looking at progress in reducing road deaths and serious injuries across Europe. Furthermore, a panel discussion will look at how reducing speed could help us reach the 2030 target of reducing road deaths and serious injuries by 50%. The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) is also expected to present its 2025 Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) Award to a country for its progress in improving road safety. Programme can be found here.

Transport Research Arena (TRA), Budapest, May 2026 The European Commission and the Hungarian Public Roads together with the European Transport Research Platforms ACARE, ALICE, CEDR, ECTP, ERRAC, ERTRAC, ETRA and Waterborne are organizing the Transport Research Arena Conference (TRA2026) which will take place in Budapest, Hungary on 18-21 May 2026. The conference aims to advance sustainable, inclusive, and innovative transportation solutions under the theme "ReGeneration in Transport". Researchers can submit their abstracts until 30 June 2025.