NRSO Road Safety

City of Athens – The Great Walk Traffic Arrangements, 2020 The new emblematic sustainable urban mobility arrangements within the Athens Great Walk project were presented by NTUA Professor George Yannis at the Athens City Council on May 11, 2020, which unanimously accepted the breakthrough and brave choices of Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis for extended regain of urban public space, public transport in priority, and safe and efficient mobility of pedestrians and cyclists.

Latest Developments

ITF – Safe Micromobility Report, 2020 The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently a new Report titled “Safe Micromobility” as part of the ITF Corporate Partnership Board and with the active contribution of NTUA. This Report explores the safety aspects associated with the increasing use of e-scooters and other forms of micromobility in cities. It considers a range of actions to make urban traffic with micromobility safe, including in street layout, vehicle design and vehicle operation, user education and enforcement of rules. The report offers ten recommendations for policy makers, city planners, operators and manufacturers.

WHO – European Regional Status Report on Road Safety, 2020 The  World Health Organisation (WHO) published recently the “European Regional Status Report on Road Safety 2019”  with the active contribution of NTUA. The European Regional Status Report on Road Safety describes the progress made by Governments in the Region. This Report demonstrates that over 221 people are killed on roads every day in the WHO European Region while thousands more are injured or disabled, with long-lasting effects.  People from the eastern part of our Region bear the highest burden of road-traffic mortality and morbidity.

ETSC – Traffic Safety Education Principles, 2020 The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), the Flemish Foundation for Traffic Knowledge (VSV) and Fundación MAPFRE have published a Report titled “Key Principles for Traffic Safety and Mobility Education”, as part of the LEARN! (Leveraging Education to Advance Road safety Now) project and it sets out 17 recommendations that should be implemented in all European countries, in order to ensure that everyone – and especially children and youngsters – receive high quality traffic safety and mobility education. They are accompanied by best practice examples that illustrate how these principles can be applied in practice.

GRSP/ VIAS – Towards the 12 voluntary global targets for road safety, 2020 Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) in collaboration with the VIAS Institute recently published the Manual on “Towards the 12 voluntary global targets for road safety”, providing guidance for countries on activities and measures to achieve the voluntary global road safety performance targets.  It spells out what type of activities need to be undertaken, what data sources can be used and how performance can be measured and presented. It defines each target and points out what actions need to be taken and how each target can be measured.

World Bank – Road Safety Guide for LMIC, 2020 The World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility published recently the “Guide for Road Safety Opportunities and Challenges: Low- and Middle-income Country Profiles“. The Report aims to support decision-making with key data, social and economic assessments for all 125 Low- and Middle-Income Countries. The Road Safety Country Profiles present information on management, roads, speed, vehicles, road users, and post-crash care, along with information on the current status for each country, region and with extensive information on key risk factors, issues and opportunities.

European Commission – Africa-Europe Alliance for Road Safety, 2020 The Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs was launched by the European Commission in September 2018, as an effort to drive forward intercontinental cooperation on an equal footing. This related Transport Task Force has delivered recently with the active contribution of NTUA, a Report offering recommendations and conclusions on three important areas of transport cooperation: aviation, road safety and connectivity. On Road Safety the Report brings forward thirteen recommendations to reduce road accident injuries, addressing the five main priority areas: road safety management and data collection, infrastructure safety, vehicle safety, safety of road users and post-crash care.

SaferAfrica – Innovating dialogue for a safer Africa at Cordis, 2020 The results of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 SaferAfrica project are highlighted at the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) of the European Commission. SaferAfrica, aiming to share expertise between Europe and Africa, focused on four pillars: Road Safety Knowledge and Data, a Road Safety Traffic Management Capacity Review, Capacity Building and Training and Sharing Good Practices. The most innovative results of the project are the African Road Safety Observatory and the African-European Dialogue Platform on Road Safety, developed with the active contribution of NTUA.

Our Publications

Transport Research Arena (TRA), Helsinki, 2020 The Transport Research Arena Conference (TRA 2020) organised by the European Commisison and the European transport research platforms (ACARE, ALICE, CEDR, ECTP, ERRAC, ERTRAC, ETRA, Waterborne), was scheduled to take place in Helsinki, Finland from 26-30th April 2020, themed “Rethinking transport – towards clean and inclusive mobility”. The conference was cancelled, though, due to the corona virus crisis.  Nevertheless, all scientific papers are scheduled to be published at the Conference Proceedings. Click here for the full list of our papers (full paper + presentation)...

Drive2theFuture – 1st Newsletter, 2020 The 1st newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project Drive2theFuture (Needs, wants and behaviour of drivers and automated vehicle users today and into the future) was recently released highlighting the 1st Drive2theFuture Workshop (Brussels, March 2020), together with the Autonomous Vehicles consumer survey and the results from the three Plenary Meetings which took place so far. The 1st Newsletter highlights also the 12 pilots of the project and makes a reference to the three Horizon 2020 projects which focus also on driver behaviour and acceptance of connected, cooperative and automated transport.   Sign up here.

BE OPEN – 2nd Newsletter, 2020 The 2nd Newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project BeOpen (European forum and observatory for open science in transport) was recently released highlighting the results of the second project meeting (Piraeus, February 2020), the EOSC Symposium results and the EC President’s speech mentioning the importance of the European Open Science Cloud.  Sign up here:

A critical overview of driver recording tools, 2020 A paper titled “A critical overview of driver recording tools” authored by Apostolis Ziakopoulos, Dimitris Tselentis, Armira Kontaxi and George Yannis, is now published in Journal of Safety Research. The objective of this review paper is to present and comparatively assess the various driver recording tools that researchers have at their disposal. A critical synthesis of the results was conducted, providing the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing each tool and including additional knowledge regarding ease of experimental implementation, data handling issues, impacts on subsequent analyses, as well as the respective cost parameters. New technologies provide undeniably powerful tools that allow for seamless data handling, storage, and analysis, such as smartphones and in-vehicle data recorders. However, this sometimes comes at considerable costs (which may or may not pay off at a later stage), while legacy driver recording methods still have their own niches to fill in research.

Spatio-temporal analysis of traffic safety using data from smartphone sensors, 2020 A Diploma Thesis titled “Spatio-temporal analysis of traffic safety using data from smartphone sensors” was recently presented by Elina Frantzola. Data from smartphone sensors on driver behaviour were combined with traffic data from the Athens Traffic Management Centre and the respective geometric characteristics from Google Maps in order to produce the respective GIS maps and allow for statistical analysis.  The statistical models developed demonstrated that traffic characteristics (traffic speed and occupancy) have the most statistically significant impact on the frequency of harsh events compared to road geometric characteristics and driver behaviour data. Finally, a strong correlation between harsh events and time variation was found, indicating an overall increase in harsh events during nighttime.

Upcoming Events

LEVITATE – Webinar: The impacts of automation in urban transport – featuring local urban strategies, 2020 The Horizon 2020 project Levitate (Societal Level Impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles) is organising the 2nd webinar on the impacts of automation in urban transport – featuring local urban strategies on 11 June, 2020 (10:00-11:30 CET).  This webinar will give an insight into the challenges that Urban mobility is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis and into local mobility strategies for longer terms adapted to the new normal. There will be presentations from LEVITATE partners: National Technical University of Athens, Transport for Greater Manchester, and an additional city representative (tbc).

HADI – International Road Safety Virtual Conference, 2020 The Hellenic Association of Driving Instructors together with Key Transportation Organisations in Greece are organising an International Multidisciplinary Traffic Safety Virtual Conference on 29-30 May 2020. The Conference aims concern the evaluation of traffic and road safety in Greece, the identification of current and future pedestrians and vehicles traffic problems in Greece related to new technologies, the exchange of experiences from scientific studies, and current traffic safety actions and practices in Greece and internationally.