NRSO Road Safety Update - November 2018

Dimitris Tselentis defended his PhD Thesis on benchmarking driving efficiency using data science techniques, 2018 Dimitris Tselentis has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled: Benchmarking Driving Efficiency using Data Science Techniques applied on Large-Scale Smartphone Data. This PhD thesis was carried out at the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens under the supervision of Prof. George Yannis. The main objective of this PhD is to provide a methodological approach for driving safety efficiency benchmarking on a trip and driver basis using data science techniques. It also investigates the way to achieve this by defining a safety efficiency index based on travel and driving behaviour metrics collected from smartphone devices. Furthermore, the present doctoral research proposes a methodological framework for identifying the least efficient trips in a database and for estimating the efficient level of metrics that each non-efficient trip should reach to become efficient. Finally, this dissertation’s objective is to study the temporal evolution of driving efficiency and identify the main driving patterns and profiles of the driver groups formed.   Latest Developments ITF – Safer City Streets: Global Benchmarking for Urban Road Safety, 2018 The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report: “Safer City Streets: Global Benchmarking for Urban Road Safety”, with the active contribution of NTUA. This document aims to support cities in setting road safety targets and to monitor progress in improving urban road safety. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists account for nearly 80% of urban traffic fatalities. Cities should thus intensify efforts to improve the safety of vulnerable road users. This document presents traffic safety indicators for different road user groups collected in 31 cities worldwide to facilitate the evaluation, monitoring and benchmarking of road safety outcomes. It places a particular attention on measuring the risk of fatality per unit distance traveled.    European Commission – Study on powered two-wheeler and bicycle accidents in the EU, SaferWheels, 2018 The European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) published the Final Report of the “Study on powered two-wheeler and bicycle accidents in the EU, SaferWheels”, with the active contribution of NTUA. The SaferWheels study was conducted to investigate accident causation for traffic accidents involving powered two-wheelers and bicycles in the European Union. The objective of the study was to gather PTW and bicycle accident data from in-depth crash investigations, obtain accident causation and medical data for those crashes, and to store the information according to an appropriate and efficient protocol enabling a causation-oriented analysis.  European Commission – Report on the Transport Research Open Science Cloud, 2018 The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation published a Report titled “Analysis of the state of the art, barriers, needs and opportunities for setting up a Transport Research Cloud”, with the active contribution of NTUA Professor George Yannis. This Report focuses on the requirements for data sharing within the transport research community. In particular, the Report examines the potential of a Transport Research Cloud (TRC) as a subset of the European Union’s European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative. Six domain experts collected data based on their personal experiences, contacts, prior research and a survey sent out to other researchers in the transport domain to enable a preliminary analysis concerning the needs, barriers and potential benefits for the domain should a TRC be realized. Road Safety constitutes a major component of this Transport Research Cloud.   UNECE – 50th anniversary, Vienna Conventions on Road Traffic and on Road Signs and Signals, 1968-2018 UNECE celebrates the 50th anniversary of Vienna Conventions on Road Traffic and on Road Signs and Signals, 1968-2018. At the turn of their 50th anniversary, the Vienna Conventions on Road Traffic and on Road Signs and Signals from 1968 are more relevant than ever. Whether helping to address the most critical road safety needs, or facilitating the development of automated driving functionalities, reference to these legal texts, which are evolving with technological developments, is a necessity for countries around the world. The two Conventions have a global scope and are important frameworks facilitating international road traffic through uniform traffic rules and harmonized road signs, signals, symbols and markings.   Statistics Corner European Commission – Final Road Safety Figures, 2017 On the occasion of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, the European Commission presented the final Road Safety Figures for 2017, which show for the second year in a row a decrease by 2% of road fatalities in the EU compared to the previous year. European Coordinator for Road Safety Matthew Baldwin said: “Whilst European roads are the safest in the world, the downward curve has flattened out in past years. We still have many challenges ahead of us: I especially think of vulnerable road users, who– as the figures show- are making up a larger share of the casualties, especially in urban areas. We need an active, cooperative, holistic approach amongst all stakeholders to implement what we know needs to be done – the Safe System“.   Eurostat – Regional Road Accident Statistics 2018 The Eurostat Regional Yearbook 2018 provides a detailed picture relating to a broad range of statistical topics across the Regions of the EU Member States, as well as the Regions of the EFTA and candidate countries, including the European Regions with the lowest and highest road accident rates. Each chapter presents statistical information in maps, tables, figures and infographics, accompanied by a descriptive analysis highlighting the main findings.   Our Publications UNECE – National Road Safety Policy Development – Trends and Challenges, Tbilisi, 2018 UNECE and the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia organised a Workshop titled: “National Road Safety Policy development – trends and challenges| which was held with great success in Tbilisi, Georgia on 13-14 November 2018. The aim of the workshop was to strengthen the knowledge of Central Asia, Caucasus and East-Europe countries on how to define national road safety policy and improve road safety situation. As such, the workshop helped participants to better understand international and regional best practices on road safety management, collection and utilization of robust and reliable road safety statistics and tools (SafeFITS, and RSPR) and methodologies for setting up road safety strategic goals.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:  SafetyCube – the European Road Safety Decision Support System  The SafeFITS Model  The European Union Road Safety Action Plan Ethos Events – 2nd Auto Forum “Change your car!”, 2018 Ethos Events in collaboration with the financial and business portal banks.com.gr and the magazine CHRIMA organized with great success the 2nd Auto Forum titled: “Change your car!” on 7 November 2018 in Athens. The focus was on the latest technological advances in the field of passive safety in the automotive sector and the need for consumers to understand the potential of the new technology in order to “escape” untouchable or at least slightly injured after a violent collision caused by a traffic accident.  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  The Road to Traffic Automation World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims 2018 The American College of Greece – Institute of Public Health organized with great success a workshop on “Road Accidents and Safe Traffic Behaviour: Are they prevented or are they just cured?” on 14 November 2018 in Athens, Greece, with key note speakers NTUA Professor George Yannis and NKUA Em.Professor George Baltopoulos.  NTUA’s presentation concerned:    Road Accidents, Traffic Behaviour and Safety Identification of patterns of driver speeding behaviour and safety margins from tangent to curve, 2018 A paper titled “Identification of patterns of driver speeding behaviour and safety margins from tangent to curve” authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou, Stergios Mavromatis, Dimosthenis Pavlou and George Yannis is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This paper presents a novel definition of drivers’ safety margins reflected in speed profiles on a tangent to curved road design. These safety margins are based on a vehicle dynamics model, which is implemented to assess the speed variation at impending skid conditions from tangent to curve on the basis of several parameters. Data from a driving simulator experiment are used to test the proposed methodology, explore driver’s speed profiles and the parameters affecting drivers’ safety margins. The results suggest that drivers’ safety margins towards the examined curve are considerable, with the majority of the drivers using less than 55% of the available vehicle engine power.  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. Especially after the economic crisis, the impact of the economy is even higher. Passenger-kilometers were also found with increased impact on the number of road fatalities after the economic crisis.   Upcoming Events ITS Hellas – 4th Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference, Athens, 2019 The 4th Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems and related developments in Greece, which is organised by ITS Hellas, will take place in Athens, on 18-19 December 2018. The aim of the conference is to discuss the broad deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) as a tool to achieve economic growth and prosperity and ensure the effectiveness, efficiency and safety of transport for the benefit of the respective industry, the end-users and the environment.  RSS2019 – Road Safety and Simulation International Conference, Iowa, 2019 The National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) of the University of Iowa is organizing the Road Safety & Simulation International Conference 2019 (RSS2019) which will be held on 14-17 October 2019 in Iowa City, Iowa, USA. The conference theme focuses on Transformations in Transportation, and conference topics include, but are not limited to: Automated Vehicles Technology, Connected Vehicles Technology, Vulnerable Road Users, Roadway Infrastructure Design, and Distributed Simulation Technology.  Abstracts are due by 1 February 2019 HITE / HIT – 9th International Congress on Transport Research (ICTR), Athens, 2019 The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) and the Hellenic Institute of Transport (H.I.T.) are co-organizing the 9th International Congress on Transport Research (ICTR), which will be held on 24-25 October 2019, in Athens, Greece. The spotlight theme of the 2017 Congress is: “Transportation 4.0: The Smart Evolution”. ICTR 2019 will host innovative research and development work in the field of transportation systems, operations and infrastructures, in Greece and abroad. The Congress objective is to showcase recent top-notch research activities in transportation, merge research findings and policy making tasks, facilitate the exchange of knowledge in the local and international level and draw conclusions and shape recommendations on the future of transportation. Abstract Submission due to 15th January 2019.