A paper titled ‘Current road safety trends in Greece‘ co-authored by George Yannis and Alexandra Laiou is now published in Periodica Polytechnica. Greece has been for years among the worst performing countries in Europe in terms of road safety with one of the highest annual rates of fatalities per million inhabitants in the EU. However, a gradual decrease has been recorded over time. The bad performance of Greece in road safety is partially due to institutional problems such as inefficient organization of public administration, lack of organized structures of the State with responsibility for road safety, non-accountability of stakeholders in relation to the implementation of actions and inadequate funding for road safety. The most critical, road user behavior related, accident factors include speeding, low usage rates of seat belts and helmets, unorganized and unprotected traffic of vulnerable road users, drink-driving, use of mobile phones while driving and generalized aggressive driving. In Greece, a great potential for safety improvement exists, if serious effort for tackling the above major critical factors is made. 

A paper titled ‘A review of the effect of traffic and weather characteristics on road safety‘ co-authored by Athanasios Theofilatos and George Yannis is now published in Accident Analysis & Prevention. Taking into consideration the increasing availability of real-time traffic data and stimulated by the importance of proactive safety management, this paper attempts to provide a review of the effect of traffic and weather characteristics on road safety, identify the gaps and discuss the needs for further research. Despite the existence of generally mixed evidence on the effect of traffic parameters, a few patterns can be observed. For instance, traffic flow seems to have a non-linear relationship with accident rates, even though some studies suggest linear relationship with accidents. On the other hand, increased speed limits have found to have a straightforward positive relationship with accident occurrence. Regarding weather effects, the effect of precipitation is quite consistent and leads generally to increased accident frequency but does not seem to have a consistent effect on severity. The impact of other weather parameters on safety, such as visibility, wind speed and temperature is not found straightforward so far. The increasing use of real-time data not only makes easier to identify the safety impact of traffic and weather characteristics, but most importantly makes possible the identification of their combined effect. The more systematic use of these real-time data may address several of the research gaps identified in this research.  

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘The combined effect of economic crisis, traffic and weather conditions on road safety in Athens‘ was presented by Eleni Ziaka in July 2014. Data was collected on a monthly basis for the period 2006-2011 in Attica for victims in road accidents (motorcyclists & pedestrians) including rainfall and temperature, traffic volume and speed in selected arterials and police reports (use of seatbelt and helmet, driving under the influence of alcohol and speed limit violations) and six lognormal regression models were developed. Results show that congestion is statistically significant in every model and speed is statistically significant only in models with seriously injured and killed people. Also, it was found that an increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall increases the number of casualties and especially the seriously injured and killed people. Moreover, influence of speed limit violations and driving under the influence of alcohol is statistically significant. Finally, it is seen that there is a decrease trend in the number of casualties during the economic crisis. 

The fourth edition of the Glossary for Transport Statistics is now published by the ITF, Eurostat and UNECE. The Glossary for Transport Statistics was published for the first time in 1994 with the purpose of assisting member countries during the collection of data on transport using the Common Questionnaire developed by the UNECE, ITF and Eurostat. It now comprises 735 definitions and represents a point of reference for all those involved in transport statistics. 

A paper titled ‘Motorcycle riding under the influence of alcohol: Results from the SARTRE-4 survey‘, co-authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou, Athanasios Theofilatos, George Yannis, Julien Cestac and Sami Kraïem is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. This research investigates the factors affecting the declared frequency of drink-riding among motorcyclists in Europe and explores regional differences. Data were collected from the SARTRE-4 (Social Attitudes to Road Traffic Risk in Europe) survey, which was conducted in 19 countries. A total sample of 4483 motorcyclists was interviewed by using a face-to-face questionnaire. The data were analyzed by means of multilevel ordered logit models. The results revealed significant regional differences (between Northern, Eastern and Southern European countries) in self-reported drink-riding frequencies in Europe. In general,declared drinking and riding were positively associated with gender (males), increased exposure, underestimation of risk, friends’ behaviour, past accidents and alcohol ticket experience. On the other hand, it was negatively associated with underestimation of the amount of alcohol allowed before driving, and support for more severe penalties.   

The Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) of the European Commission released the Statistical Pocketbook 2014 ‘EU Transport in figures‘. In this Statistical Pocketbook, key road safety Tables are contained, together with several other Tables on transport statistics, providing a complete picture of current trends in transport in Europe. Data on road fatalities for the EU member states and associate countries allow for time series comparisons and country rankings. 

A campaign on Road Safety for Greek and foreign drivers travelling in Greece is organised by the Road Safety Institute ‘Panos Mylonas’ and the Representation of the European Commission in Greece. The campaign consists of a leaflet – in Greek and English – with road safety tips for motorists, aiming to raise drivers’ awareness, especially during summertime. Moreover, a poster, tv and radio spots were created to highlight the right use of belt, helmet and mobile phone while driving as well as responsible drinking and speed limits.

A Global Approach to Safer Motorcycling’ has recently been published by the International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association (IMMA). This Report updates and replaces the IMMA motorcycle safety document ‘HHRT – Headlight, Helmet, Road Surface and Training’ published in 2010. The key principles in HHRT still apply, but the new Report includes a selection of global best practices for policy makers’ consideration and implies a wider perspective on sustainable road safety – the position of the Powered Two Wheeler (PTW) in society, its economic contribution, how PTWs are used and how infrastructure can be developed to support rider safety. 

NTUA Emeritus Professor George Kanellaidis has been recently awarded by the President of the Hellenic Republic, the Golden Cross of the Order of Merit for his contribution to the Strategic Plan for Road Safety in Greece.  Emeritus Professor George Kanellaidis has been involved in all areas of highways engineering and road safety for more than 40 years through numerous research projects, engineering studies in Greece and abroad and he is the author of a great number of published scientific papers, cited widely worldwide. Road safety strategic planning in Greece has been one of his key scientific areas over the last decades.

As part of the PRAISE project, the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) presents annual awards in recognition of organisations that have made an outstanding commitment to improving work-related road safety. The competition aims to spur on employers throughout the EU to tackle road safety at work and it is divided into three separate categories according to the size and type of the applicant organisations: SME (Small-Medium Enterprise), Large Company and Public Authority. The winners will be chosen by an independent panel of experts appointed by ETSC. Theapplication deadline is early September and the ‘PRAISE Award’ will be presented on the 13th of October 2014 at the PRAISE Annual Conference. 

Professor John Golias was recently elected as the new Rector of the National Technical University of Athens, heading nine Engineering Schools, more than 500 faculty members, 12.000 students and 4.000 researchers. It is the first time that a Transportation Engineer is elected as NTUA Rector. Professor John Golias is the Director of Traffic Engineering Laboratory of NTUA and Dean of the School of Civil Engineering. 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. 

A paper titled ‘Road safety forecasts in five European countries using structural time-series models‘, co-authored by Constantinos Antoniou, Eleonora Papadimitriou and George Yannis is now published in Traffic Injury Prevention. The objective of this research is toapply structural time series models for obtaining reliable medium- to long-term forecasts of road traffic fatality risk using data from 5 countries with different characteristics from all over Europe(Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Norway, and Switzerland). Two structural time series models are considered: (1) the local linear trend model and the (2) latent risk time series model. Furthermore, a structured decision tree for the selection of the applicable model for each situation (developed within the Road Safety Data, Collection, Transfer and Analysis

A paper titled ‘Needs and priorities of road safety stakeholders for evidence-based policy making‘ co-authored by Eleonora Papadimitriou and George Yannis is now published in Transport Policy Journal. The objective of this research is the analysis of needs and priorities of road safety stakeholders for evidence-based policy making. Needs and priorities concern both the data to be collected or made available and the tools to be developed or made available to support science-based policy-making. Within the EC co-funded DaCoTA research project, an on-line survey was addressed to more than 3.000 stakeholders, mostly from European countries, in which participants were asked to assess the importance of more than 50 items reflecting data and resources for all stages of road safety policy making. Cluster analysis was carried out, revealing 4 groups of stakeholders with similar needs and priorities: a “low priorities” group, a “need data and models group”, a group mainly interested on “implementation” and an “in-depth analysis” group. Further analysis suggested that the four clusters are adequately – and often similarly – represented in all groups of countries, and in all types of organizations (e.g. national administrations, universities, interest groups, road safety organizations etc.).  

The Global Road Safety Partnership Annual Report has recently been published. The report summarises in brief the actions taken by the Global Road Safety Partnership during the year 2013 to encourage and to increase road safety efforts within the framework of the Decade of Action and to build and share knowledge to achieve a reduction in road crash death and injury; and also demonstrates that national and global improvement is achievable. 

A paper titled ‘Latent risk and trend models for the evolution of annual fatality numbers in 30 European countries‘ co-authored by Emmanuelle Dupont, Jacques J.F. Commandeur, Sylvain Lassarre, Frits Bijleveld, Heike Martensen, Constantinos Antoniou, Eleonora Papadimitriou, George Yannis, Elke Hermans, Catherine Pérez, Elena Santamariña-Rubio, Davide Shingo Usami,Gabriele Giustiniani is now published in Accident Analysis & Prevention. In this paper a unified methodology is presented for the modelling of the evolution of road safety in 30 European countries. For each country, annual data of the best available exposure indicator and of the number of fatalities were simultaneously analysed with the bivariate latent risk time series model. This model is based on the assumption that the amount of exposure and the number of fatalities are intrinsically related. It captures the dynamic evolution in the fatalities as the product of the dynamic evolution in two latent trends: the trend in the fatality risk and the trend in the exposure to that risk. The temporal structure of the unobserved components of the optimal model was established, and structural breaks in the trends related to external events were identified and captured by adding intervention variables to the appropriate components of the model. As a final step, for each country the optimally modelled developments were projected into the future, thus yielding forecasts for the number of fatalities up to and including 2020.  

A paper titled ‘Impact of texting on young drivers’ behaviour and safety in urban and rural roads through a simulation experiment‘ co-authored by George Yannis,Alexandra Laiou, Panagiotis Papantoniou and Charalambos Christoforou is now published in Journal of Safety Research. A driving simulator experiment was carried out in which 34 young participants drove in different driving scenarios; specifically, driving in good weather, in raining conditions, in daylight and in night were examined. Lognormal regression methods were used to investigate the influence of texting as well as various other parameters on the mean speed and mean reaction time. Binary logistic methods were used to investigate the influence of texting use as well as various other parameters in the probability of an accident. It appears that texting leads to statistically significant decrease of the mean speed and increase of the mean reaction time in urban and rural road environment. Simultaneously, it leads to an increased accident probability due to driver distraction and delayed reaction at the moment of the incident. It appeared that drivers using mobile phones with a touch screen present different driving behavior with respect to their speed, however, they had an even higher probability of being involved in an accident.  

A paper titled ‘Modeling road accident injury under-reporting in Europe‘ co-authored by George Yannis, Eleonora Papadimitriou, Antonis Chaziris and Jeremy Broughton is now published in European Transport Research Review. The purpose of this research is to present a disaggregate analysis of road accident injury under-reporting in selected European countries. The level of injury under-reporting is expressed by under-reporting coefficients, estimated as the actual estimated number of road accident injuries of a given severity to the number of related injuries recorded by the Police. Log-rate models are developed in order to estimate the combined effects of country (CZ, FR, GR, HU, NL, ES and the UK), road user type (car occupant, motorcyclist, pedal cyclist, pedestrian), Police severity score (serious or slight injury) and MAIS score (the maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale score) on under-reporting. The results suggest that the examined characteristics have important combined effect on under-reporting (i.e. third-order interaction). For example, it was found that slight injuries are more likely to be under-reported than serious injuries in the Czech Republic, France, and Greece, while the opposite is the case for the Netherlands and the UK. Moreover, although the Netherlands do not present high under-reporting rates overall, a particular issue is identified in this country for pedal cyclists’ slight injuries.  

A new application ‘The Road Safety Atlas‘ has  been recently released by the Road Safety Unit of the European Commission, exploiting data from the CARE database, the EU database with disaggregate data. It is an application openly available with several detailed thematic maps on road fatalities and extended backround data available, including statistics per country and comparisons between countries. The application is available on desktop computers, laptop, mobile phones and tablets.  

The United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development has recently included road safety in the “Zero Draft” which proposed goals and targets on Sustainable Development for the Post 2015 Developemnet Agenda. At the proposed goal 11 on building inclusive, safe and sustainable cities and human settlements, a specific road safety goal is set: to provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport for all and to expand public transport and improve road safety, with specific target to half the number of road fatalities by 2030. 

The new smartphone application ‘Going Abroad’ is now available after an initiative of the European Commission. This app provides information on EU road traffic rules and is available for iPhone and iPad, Google Android and Microsoft Windows phones in 22 languages. Apart from all important road safety information for all EU countries, the app also contains a road safety quiz and a memory game to entertain passengers during long car journeys. Of course the app should never be checked while driving; drivers should let the passengers do the job or take breaks from driving to stay both rested and well-informed. 

The Symposium on Future Road Infrastructure Challenges was organised by the European Union Road Federation (ERF) and took place with great success in Brussels on 18 June 2014. It was a highly dynamic and interactive forum in which the current challenges faced by the sector were discussed by the more than 100 experts, decision makers and stakeholders.  The ERF event was structured around five principal themes: safety, sustainability, ITS, financing and innovation. All presentations are now available. 

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has launched recently the PIN Annual Report at the PIN Annual Conference on June 18th, 2014 in Brussels. There were 9.800 fewer road deaths in the EU in 2011-2013 than in three years before in 2010, demonstrating that the European Union is almost on track to reach the 2020 target. Slovakia (-37%) tops the ranking for reduction in road deaths between 2010 and 2013, followed by Spain, Greece and Portugal with reductions of more than 30%. Across the EU28 road deaths have been cut by 18% between 2010 and 2013, equivalent to a 6.2% average annual reduction. The EU target for 2020 is therefore reachable if combined efforts at both national and EU level are stepped up.  However, there is a clearly slower progress in reducing serious injuries on EU roads. George Yannis, NTUA Associate Professor, stated that “The difference in progress might be attributed to several factors which have a more important impact on deaths than on serious injuries, such as improved vehicle passive safety, speed management and better driver behaviour (leading to less injury accidents but many less deaths) and the improved post accident care systems across the EU.”

The stakeholder Conference on Road Infrastructure Safety Management organised by the European Commision took place with great success on 13 June 2014, in Brussels. More than 80 key road safety experts, stakeholders and decision makers participated and contributed actively to the Conference discussions. The Conference was part of the study for theevaluation of the costs and benefits associated with Directive 2008/96/EC on road infrastructure safety management and focused on three key topics: Vulnerable Road Users, Intelligent Transport Systems and Measurement of Safety Performance of the Roads. 

The complete conclusions are now available. 

NTUA Associate Professor George Yannis summarised the challenges and the concluding remarks for each of the three key topics: ‘Current and future challenges of the Directive 2008/96/EC‘ 

NTUA Professor Matthew Karlaftis passed away on 4 June 2014. NTUA and the global scientific community lost an eminent scientist and a bright personality, with significant contribution to transportation planning and engineering in Greece and worldwide. Prof. M.Karlaftis contributed and guided several research projects and engineering studies and published numerous papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings, cited intensively worldwide. Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Research Part C and Board Member of several other Journals, he received several scientific awards. He served also as Chairman of the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers. Transportation statistical modeling was his passion, with great contributions on road accident analysis. Prof. M.Karlaftis will always be the bright example for the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens.

According to the Prime Minister Decision nr. 1245/15-5-2014, the Greek Road Safety Inter-Ministry Committee is re-established.  Under the new structure, the Inter-Ministry Committee is chaired by the Prime Minister, assisted by a Support Committee chaired by the Deputy Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Networks and the respective Secretariat.   In parallel, the new National Road Safety Council has also been re-established, comprising representatives from all decision makers and stakeholders involved, as well as key road safety experts. 

The Joint Congress of European Neurology, organised by the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) and the European Neurological Society (ENS) took place on 31 May – 3 June, 2014, in Istanbul. This scientific meeting provided a platform for continuing education in all fields of neurology, covering a broad spectrum of topics with state-of-the-art lectures by acknowledged experts. 

NTUA contributed to the following road safety presentations:

 Predictors of driving performance in individuals with MCI: preliminary results

 Prediction of driving performance in patients with Parkinson’s disease: preliminary findings on the role of the Comprehensive Trail Making test

 Reaction time to incidents as a function of age and neurological disease: preliminary findings from a large driving simulation experiment

 The relation between intentional and incidental memory in healthy young versus older individuals

The workshop ‘Together we are road safety’, organised by the European Road Safety Charter and the Road Safety Institute ‘Panos Mylonas’ took place with great success on May 28th in Athens . 

The purpose of the workshop was to promote best practices and explore new ideas in relation to awareness and education of young people on road safety issues.

NTUA Professors George Yannis and Constantinos Antoniou presented: ‘Safety statistics at the Greek roads’.  

The Road Safety Festival ‘Safe driving, it’s a matter of life‘, organised by the Hellenic Association of Insurance Companies and the ‘Road Safety Institute – Panos Mylonas‘ took place on May 28th, at Syntagma Square, Athens, under the auspices of the Greek Presidency of the EU and the City of Athens. 

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Comparative multilevel road safety analysis in European capitals‘ was presented by Marianthi Mermygka in May 2014. Data on the number and the characteristics of road fatalities, the population and other indicators of the nine selected European capital cities for the period 2007 – 2011 were exploited. Multilevel Poisson statistical models were developed, allowing for a clearer hierarchical data structure and the road safety performance ranking in these cities. Factors found with a statistically significant impact concerned city characteristics (road network length, population density, public transport use) and accident characteristics (road user and vehicle type). The comparison between the European capital cities showed that the larger the city’s road network is, the higher the level of road safety is in this city. 

The European Road Safety Charter team hosted an online conference onRoad Safety and Media, on June 4th, 2014. Road Safety media experts from THINK!, La Prévention Routière and the Hellenic Road Safety Institute ‘Panos Mylonas’ shared knowledge of their effective communication campaigns, and how to best manage contacts with press and media.