The 21st Meeting of the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) organised by the International Transport Forum (ITF) took place in Ljubljana, on 12-13 October 2015. 

NTUA presentations concerned:

A film to raise awareness of the road safety crisis, directed by Luc Besson is now a part of the #SAVEKIDSLIVES campaign on road safety of the FIA and FIA Foundation, the international motoring federation. According to World Health Organisation figures, 500 children are killed each day in road crashes globally. In a bid to raise awareness of this road safety crisis, Jean Todt, President of the FIA, and Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Road Safety, turned to world renowned film director Luc Besson to deliver a potent visual message highlighting the road dangers facing children around the world. The film is a shocking wake-up call and was shot on location in South Africa and Paris demonstrating the dangers faced every day by children on their journey to school, whether caused by the lack of safe infrastructure in the townships of South Africa or by the heavy traffic of a major European city.  

The FENS Featured Regional Meeting – FFRM 2015 meeting, organised by the Hellenic, Israel and Serbian Societies for Neuroscience, took place in Thessaloniki, on 7-10 October 2015. The three Neuroscience Societies came together for the first time, enhanced their relationships and represented themselves to an international audience. 

NTUA presentation concerned ‘Executive Functions and Driving Performance in a High Traffic Urban Condition in Mild Cognitive Impairment‘ 

The ITS World Congress took place with great success on 5-9 October 2015 in Bordeaux, France. The ITS Congress and Exhibition is the world’s largest event in intelligent transport systems and services. Through the main theme “Towards Intelligent Mobility – Better Use of Space”, the Bordeaux Congress focuses not only on how achieving intelligent mobility will change our lives but also on the benefits space can bring to ITS applications. 

An international conference on Green Accessible Intelligent Transport (GAIT2015) – Turkey – EU partnership for sustainable transportation, organised by the European Commission and the  Turkish Ministry of Transport, took place in Istanbul, on 8-9 October 2016.  The plenary and discussion sessions of the conference were attended by more than 700 participants and raised important issues belonging to the daily lives of Turkish and European citizens, varying from accessibility of transport services to the adaptation and mitigation challenges posed by climate change on the transport sector.  

NTUA presentation concerned: ‘Road safety in urban mobility policies‘  

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published recently the full version of the Annual Report 2015, which comprises a synthesis of the main trends and road safety indicators for the year 2013 and preliminary data for the year 2014. It presents longer-term trends in order to better understand the developments taking place in the different countries. The number of road fatalities fell by 4.3% between 2013 and 2012 in the 32 IRTAD member countries with verified data. The long-term trend shows a very significant decrease of 42% between 2000 and 2013 in the IRTAD countries, however great disparities between countries persist. Detailed validated reports for each country are illustrated in the full version of the IRTAD Annual Report. NTUA has contributed to the detailed report for Greece.

The Road Safety Unit of DG Move of the European Commission published recently the 2015 Edition of the EU Annual Road Accidents Report and the respective Infographics with the active contribution of NTUA, KFV and ERF. The EU Annual Road Accidents Report is based on most recent disaggregate data for all EU countries from the CARE Database of the European Commission and consist of summary and cross-country comparative tables, figures and maps on key road safety topics for which data comparable across the EU counties are available.

The Road Safety Unit of DG Move of the European Commission published recently the Traffic Safety Basic Facts and the respective Infographics for key road safety issues in Europe, with the active contribution of NTUA, KFV and ERF. The EU Traffic Safety Basic Facts are based on most recent disaggregate data for all EU countries from the CARE  Database of the European Commission and concern several key road safety issues like road users safety (Children, Young people, Young drivers, Elderly, Pedestrians, Cyclists, Gender), vehicle traffic safety (Motorcycles and mopeds, Passenger cars, Heavy goods vehicles and buses), road infrastructure safety (Motorways, Junctions, Urban areas, Roads outside urban areas) and accident type (Single vehicle accidents, Seasonality).

This year’s Road Safety Conference organised by TISPOL took place with great success in Manchester on 7 October 2015. This year’s conference  focused on the challenges of protecting vulnerable road users, and the importance of finding effective solutions to reduce death and serious injury on Europe’s roads. There was an interesting and varied line-up of speakers from police, policymaking and industry across Europe. 

The 2015 Road Safety & Simulation International Conference (RSS), organised by the University of Central Florida (UCF) and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) took place with great success on 6-8 October 2015, in Orlando, Florida, USA. Under the auspices of the Southeastern Transportation Center, three world-class research centers supported the conference: Center for Advanced Transportation Systems Simulation and the Institute for Simulation and Training at UCF and UTK’s Center for Transportation Research. More than 200 road safety scientists showcased and discussed  advancements in traffic simulation and driving simulator technologies, introducing new initiatives and concepts that have emerged since the previous editions of the RSS conference . 

NTUA presentations concerned:

  In-vehicle distraction and brain pathologies: Effects on reaction time and accident probability

  Cell phone use and driving performance of different age groups

  Comparative analysis of young drivers behavior in normal and simulation conditions at a rural road

A paper titled ‘Assessment of Driving Simulator Studies on Driver Distraction‘ co-authored by Panagiotis Papantoniou, Eleonora Papadimitriou and George Yannis is now published in Advances in Transportation Studies Journal. The objective of this research is the critical assessment of driving simulator studies on driver distraction. For this purpose 45 scientific papers have been examined with respect to the design of driving simulator experiments on the effects of various sources of driver distraction (in-vehicle or external). Through this analysis it appears that the most common distraction sources examined are visual distraction and cell phone use, while other sources of distraction have received notably less attention in existing studies. The simulated road environment of most experiments was rural, whereas far less is known on the effects of distraction in urban areas; furthermore, ambient traffic is not explicitly simulated and the effect of traffic flow on distracted driving may be a key question for further investigation. Finally, driver distraction is expressed by a number of measurements, in terms of its impact to driver attention (hands-off the wheel, eyes-off the road), driver behaviour (vehicle speed, headway, lateral position, driver reaction time) and driver accident risk. Although these different measurements describe different aspects of the distracted driving mechanism, it would be important to focus on the most sensitive ones, keeping in mind the entire chain of distracted driving causes and impacts, in order to significantly enhance the potential of exploitation of the results of existing studies.  

The 43rd European Transport Conference (ETC) took place with great success in Franfurt, on 28-30 September 2015. The ETC connects the worlds of research, consultancy, policy and practice. The conference programme is available here.  

A paper titled ‘Exploring the association between working memory and driving performance in Parkinson’s disease‘ co-authored by Sofia Vardaki, Hannes Devos, Ion Beratis, George Yannis and Sokratis Papageorgiou is now published in Traffic Injury Prevention. The aim of this study was toexplore whether varying levels of operational and tactical driving task demand differentially affect drivers with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and control drivers in their sign recall. Drivers of the control group performed better than drivers with PD in a sign recall task, but this trend was not statistically significant (p = 0.43). Also, regardless of group membership, subjects’ performance differed according to varying levels of task demand. Performance in the sign recall task was more likely to drop with increasing task demand (p = 0.03).This difference was significant when the variation in task demand was associated with a cognitive task, i.e., when drivers were required to apply the instructions from working memory. Although the conclusions drawn from this study are tentative, the evidence presented here is encouraging with regard to the use of a driving simulator to examine isolated cognitive functions underlying driving performance in PD. With an understanding of its limitations, such driving simulation in combination with functional assessment batteries measuring physical, visual and cognitive abilities could comprise one component of a multi-tiered system to evaluate medical fitness to drive.  

The 4th International Cycling Safety Conference took place with great success in Hannover on 15-16 September 2015, hosted by the Accident Research Unit of the Hannover Medical School, in cooperation with the Deutsche Verkehrswacht, the DVR and the ETSC. This conference started as a Dutch initiative of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, TNO, Fietsberaad (Dutch center of expertise on bicycle policy), SWOV and Delft University of Technology together with Chalmers University of Technology. The International Cycling Safety Conference (ICSC) developed to a premium forum for researchers and development engineers in the field of cycling safetyto exchange their knowledge, to extent their network and to bring up new research topics and safety solutions. 

NTUA presentations concerned:

   Analysis of Preferences for the Use of a Bicycling Sharing System in Athens

   Cycling Acceptability Investigation among University Students in Athens, Greece

The Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV, offers openly to the road safety scientific community, a very powerful online documentation tool: the SWOV Library Portal. It provides users the opporunity to search through a large number of journals, full text publications and several other road safety theme files.   

Panagiotis Papantoniou has successfully defended his PhD thesis titled:Risk factors, driver behaviour and accident probability. The case of distracted driving. 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 objective of the PhD thesis is the analysis of the effect of road, traffic and  driver risk factors on driver behaviour and accident probability at unexpected incidents, with particular focus on distracted driving. For this purpose, a large driving simulator experiment took place in which 95 participants were asked to drive under different types of distraction (no distraction, conversation with passenger, cell phone use) in different road (urban/rural) and traffic conditions (high/low). Then, within the framework of an advanced statistical methodology, latent analysis through a sequence of four Structural Equation Models allowed to go well beyond the piecemeal analyses of driving performance measures to a sound combined analysis of the interrelationship between risk factors, driving performance, driver error and accident probability at unexpected incidents. Results indicate that more likely to commit driving errors are young or old female drivers at urban areas while more likely to be involved in an accident at an unexpected incident are female drivers in low traffic conditions while talking on the cell phone. 

Professor John Golias was appointed Minister for Reconstruction of Production Environment and Energy  at the new transitional Government of Greece. It is the first time that a Transportation Engineer is appointed Minister at the Greek Governement. Professor John Golias is the Director of Traffic Engineering Laboratory of NTUA and Rector of NTUA. He has been involved in all areas of transportation planning and engineering sector for more than 35 years through numerous research projects, engineering studies and committees in Greece and abroad and he is the author of a great number of published scientific papers, cited widely worldwide. He served also as Secretary General of the Ministry of Transport during the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and Chairman of the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers. Road accident analysis and road safety policy are among his key scientific areas. [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

According to the ELSTAT final road accidents data for 2013 in Greece, 34% of road fatalities are power two wheelers, whereas 39% of road fatalities are passenger car occupants. Most car occupant fatalities occur outside built-up areas while most motorcycle and pedestrian fatalities occur inside built-up areas. Accident severity is higher outside built-up areas for all transport modes.  

According to ELSTAT data, the majority of road accidents and fatalities occur during clear sky, both inside and outside built-up area. Accident severity is higher outside built up areas. 

According to ELSTAT data, most fatalities occur at daytime and at night with good street lighting inside built-up area, or with no street lighting outside built-up area. Accident severity is increased at night with no street lighting or poor street lighting. 

According to the ELSTAT final road accidents data for 2013, collisions with stopped vehicle and when running off the road are the two most common accident types outside built-up areas. At angle collisions and pedestrian accidents, side impact and rear end collisions are the most common accident types inside built-up areas. Accident severity is more than 4 times higher outside built-up areas. 

According to ELSTAT data, among the 879 persons killed in Greece in 2013: 415 were outside built-up areas and 464 were inside built-up areas. 54% of road fatalities outside built-up area occurred on national roads. More than three quarters of road accidents and half of fatalities occurred inside built-up areas. However, accident severity is almost 4 times higher outside built-up areas in total. 

According to ELSTAT data, 879 persons were killed in Greece in 2013: 582 drivers, 146 passengers and 151 pedestrians. Male drivers account for 66% of all road fatalities in Greece. Young male drivers account for almost 50% of male driver fatalities and older people account for almost 50% of pedestrian fatalities. The higher accident severity was found in accidents involving older persons (8.7 fatalities per 100 accidents) and younger persons (4,5 fatalities per 100 accidents). 

Basic characteristics of road fatalities in Greece for the period 1991 – 2013 are summarised in a comprehensive Table (data source: ELSTAT). Since 2001, there are more than 1.000 less road fatalities per year in Greece. According to these time series data a spectacular decrease (more than 60%) in road fatalities for young people and children is observed during the last decade, as well in fatalities outside urban areas, especially in junctions, when raining and in in accidents with heavy goods vehicles. On the contrary, fatalities decrease during the last decade is quite limited for motorcyclists and cyclists, older drivers, women drivers and non resident riders, as well as in junctions inside urban areas. 

The 3rd International Conference on Access Management, organised by the Transportation Division of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) and the Access Management Committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) will take place in Pretoria, South Africa, on 6-7 July 2016. It be the 3rd International Conference following on from Athens in 2011 and Shanghai in 2014. The aim is to provide a forum to bring together specialists from around the world to interact, debate and exchange information with practitioners, researchers, academics, officials applying access management as well as students and others interested in the subject. The deadline for abstract submission is set for September 30th, 2015. 

Road safety targets were agreed at the UN negotiations for the Global Sustainable Development Goals (to be formally approved in September).  More precisely, aspecific stand-alone target (3.6) in the Health Goal (3) to reduce road traffic fatalities by 50% by 2020and a target on sustainable urban transport (11.2) in the Cities Goal (11) have been approved, in a landmark achievement for the global road safety community. 

The newly founded organisation HELLASTRON (Hellenic Association of Toll Road Network) carried out an information campaign promoting the appropriate use of emergency lanes in all Greek Motorways: Atiiki Odos, Rion-Antirion Bridge, Egnatia Odos, Nea Odos, Moreas, Aegean Motorway, Olympia Odos and Kentriki Odos. A well-documented leaflet titled “Emergency lane – Life lane” containing the necessary instructions for the use of the emergency lane is widely distributed this summer to the drivers using the Greek motorways.  

A new book titled ‘Why Young People Drink: An analysis of the determinants of youth drinking behaviour‘ authored by Dr. Jean-Pascal Assailly, Researcher at the French Institute of Sciences & Technology for Transport (IFSTTAR), is now available. Young people’s alcohol misuse has become an important concern in many countries as the consequences of this phenomenon are multiple, among which traffic accidents. This book is a comprehensive, encyclopaedic overview of the underpinnings of alcohol use in adolescents and state-of-the-art adapted prevention and treatment strategies. 

The Road Safety Institute “Panos Mylonas”  in collaboration with the Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos” carried out a campaign for road safety for Greek and foreign drivers who visit Greece, putting posters in projection screens in Athens Airport for the whole month of August 2015, with the support of Interbus. The aim of this campaign is toremind people who visit Greece that the risks on the road are constant, especially when the road network is overloaded with a large number of vehicles during summer holidays.  

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Investigation of the impact of roadside advertising  to driver behaviour and safety in cities with the use of driving simulator‘ was presented by Anastasia Gkouskou in July 2015. An experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out, in which all participants drove in specially selected driving scenarios. Regression statistical models were developed to investigate the impact of roadside advertising on the mean speed and the lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderline (lognormal) and on the mean reaction time (linear). The models’ application demonstrated thatroadside advertising leads to small increase of the mean reaction time and the mean lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderline. At the same time, it leads to small decrease of the mean speed, perhaps due to overloaded driving environment. Finally, roadside advertising appears to have no effect on the headway distance and the probability of getting involved in an accident.