Author: agouma
A paper titled ‘On statistical inference in time series analysis of the evolution of road safety co-authored by J.Commandeur, F.Bijleveld, R.Bergel-Hayat, C.Antoniou, G.Yannis and E.Papadimitriou is published in the Accident Analysis and Prevention Journal. Some commonly used statistical techniques imply assumptions that are often violated by the special properties of time series data, namely serial dependency among disturbances associated with the observations. The objective if this paper is to demonstrate the impact of such violations to the applicability of standard methods of statistical inference, which leads to an under or overestimation of the standard error and consequently may produce erroneous inferences. Moreover, having established the adverse consequences of ignoring serial dependency issues, the paper aims to describe rigorous statistical techniques used to overcome them. 
Road Safety Country Forecasts are available at the DaCoTA Road Safety Knowledge System, developed by the EU co-financed project DaCoTA. For 30 European countries (all 27 EU members States, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), a specially developed common forecasting methodology was adopted, using risk exposure as the most important explaining variable. These country forecasts can be proved useful for road safety policy, as it is important to know in what direction the annual casualties are developing, and how fast this development is expected to go. At the road safety forecasts for Greece prepared by NTUA, the 50 year trend is analysed and road fatalities forecasts scenaria up to 2020 are proposed. 
The 14th road safety seminar “Motorcycles: we drive, we do not risk our lives” organised by the Traffic Police Section of Cyprus, took place on 29 November 2012, in Nicossia. NTUA Associate Professor George Yannis presented “Current Challenges on the Security of Motorcyclists in Europe”. 
Road Safety Country Overviews are available at the DaCoTA Road Safety Knowledge System, developed by the EU co-financed project DaCoTA. For 30 European countries (all 27 EU members States, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) a comprehensive picture on road safety is provided, using a common analysis methodology: the SunFlower footprint. Information is provided on road safety structure and culture, programs and measures, road safety performance indicators and outcomes and the social cost, followed by an overall synthesis and the related literature.
At the country overview for Greece prepared by NTUA, the current road safety strengths and weaknesses are highlighted, based on a thorough analysis of all available data and information. 
At the country overview for Greece prepared by NTUA, the current road safety strengths and weaknesses are highlighted, based on a thorough analysis of all available data and information.
The European Road Safety Conference on data and knowledge-based policy-making took place with great success in the Acropolis Museum Conference Centre in Athens on 22-23 November 2012. This Conference was organised by the DaCoTA EU co-funded research project and it was a high level event which brought together more than 150 road safety delegates (policy-makers, stakeholders and technical community). The latest developments in EU road safety strategies were presented together with the latest research findings.
All Conference presentations can be found at the Dacota project website.
The NTUA presentations concerned:
Linking road safety management with road safety performance
A new book of NTUA Professor Emeritus John Frantzeskakis and first Chairman of the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers, titled “Experiences 1958-2012 of a Greek Transportation Engineer from the urban areas in Greece and abroad” has been just published by Papasotirou Editions, Greece. A special chapter on road safety summarises the more than 30 years scientific contributions of Prof. Frantzeskakis to the reduction of road accident casualties in Greece and in Europe.
According to ELSTAT final data for 2011, road fatalities in Greecein 2011 decreased by 9% in relation to 2010, with the deep economic crisis having an impact on this decrease. During the last decade, road fatalities in Greece have decreased by 39%, whereas serious injuries decreased by 50%. The rate fatalities per number of vehicles has decreased the same period by 61%. This rate is still high in comparison to the other EU countries, explained also by the the high increase of the vehicle fleet in Greece during the same period (56%). The significant increase in Police enforcement was found correlated to the road fatalities decrease.
The 25th annual ICTCT workshop took place on 6-9 of November 2012, in the Transportation Research Institute (IMOB), Hasselt University, Belgium. The workshop provided a forum to discuss innovating theories and concepts in Road Traffic Safety research and brought together international experts. This year the conference theme was ‘road safety in a globalised and more sustainable world– current issues and future challenges’. All the presentations can be found at the ICTCT website (Workshop – past – Hasselt-Belgium).
NTUA presentation concerned: “The attitudes and behaviour of European pedestrians”.
A paper titled ‘Modelling the spatial variation of road accidents and fatalities in Greece’ co-authored by E.Papadimitriou, V.Ekshler , G.Yannis, S.Lassarre is just published in the Proceedings of ICE – Transport. The paper focuses on the modelling of the spatial variation of road accidents and fatalities in Greece. For that purpose, NUTS-3 road accident and fatalities risk rates are used for the development of CAR and CAR-convolution spatial models. Moreover, two types of neighbourhood structures of the regional road safety data are tested: a basic structure defined according to the road connections between counties and an extended structure defined on the basis of both road and ferry connections between counties. The results suggest that the basic spatial structure accounts for an important part of the variation in road accident rates in the Greek counties, revealing a pattern of risk increase from northern to southern Greece. Spatial effects are also identifiable when considering the extended spatial structure, however without explaining a larger part of the overall variation compared to the basic structure.
The Final conference of th SARTRE 4 project took place on 8th November 2012 in Brussels. The objective of the project was to survey, with a uniform methodology in all 21 European countries participating, the attitudes, opinions, self-reported behaviour and experiences of European drivers, riders of power two wheels, and of non-driverswith respect to road trafic risk. The project addressed issues such as mobility experiences, perception of safety needs by different types of road users, opinions and experiences about speeding, impaired driving, attitudes towards motorcycle riders, pedestrians and other road users. NTUA was in charge of the survey in Greece and the respective analyses. The Final Report and the Booklet of the project are now available.
A paper titled ‘A statistical analysis of motorcycle helmet wearing in Greece’ co-authored by G.Yannis, A.Laiou, S.Vardaki, E.Papadimitriou, A.Dragomanovits, G.Kanellaidis is just published in the Advances in Transportation Studies scientific journal. Helmet wearing in Greece was recorded through an on-site observational survey and data collected were used for the development of a binary logistic regression model. The independent variables used were time of the day, motorcycle type, road type and riders’ characteristics (gender, age and position on the motorcycle). Pseudo-elasticity values for all variables were calculated in order to quantify the impact of each one on helmet wearing. The survey revealed low helmet wearing rates. The rates are much higher in rural than in urban areas and for drivers of large motorcycles. Based on pseudo-elasticity values the variable with the greatest impact on wearing a helmet is being the driver.
The Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Road Safety Observatory of the Technical Chamber of Greece organised a Lecture by M. Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Central Florida on ‘Changing the way we think about Traffic Safety: Current Traffic Safety Research Initiatives’. The Lecture took place on Monday, November 12th, 2012 at the Amphitheater of Railways and Transport at the NTUA Campus.
The Road Accidents Annual Statistical Report 2012 is now available at the DaCoTA Road Safety Knowledge System. This Annual Report was developed by the EU co-financed project DaCoTA, within the framework of developing and enhancing the European Road Safety Observatory. This Annual Statistical Report provides the basic characteristics of road accidents in 25 member states of the European Union (no data for Bulgaria and Lithuania yet) and Switzerland for the period 2001-2010, on the basis of data collected and processed within the CARE database, the Community Road Accident Database with disaggregate data.
The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly with the cooperation of the Road Safety Observatory of the Technical Chamber of Greece organised the 5th Pan-hellenic Conference on Road Safety, that took place in Volos on 25-26 October 2012. The key note speech was given by NTUA Professor George Kanellaidis, followed by several other presentations of NTUA scientists.
NTUA presentations concerned:
Power-Two Wheelers Critical Risk Factors: A European Study
Riding a motorcycle while impaired
Safe driving decision support for older drivers
Investigation of the effects of alcohol on the driving performance of young drivers
Development of a Strategic Plan for the improvement of road safety in Greece, 2011-2020
Driver distraction in typical high speed urban roads
Review of evaluation procedures related to safety systems
Review of current in-vehicle safety systems and related data sources
Attitudes and behaviour of Greek Power Two Wheelers
Road safety improvements in junctions using 3D laser scanning
Road safety audit of a road based on digital mapping
Pan-European road accident in-depth investigation database
Leveraging crowd-sourced road defect information for road quality assessment
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Effect of GDP change on road accidents‘ was presented by Katerina Folla in October 2012. For this analysis a database containing GDP per capita, road fatalities and population data for the EU member states for the period 1975-2011 was developed. Linear Mixed Models were developed and applied for all European countries tested and also for the different groups of countries that were selected (Northwestern, Northern, Eastern countries). It was demonstrated that an annual increase of GDP per capita leads to an annual increase in fatality rates, whereas an annual decrease of GDP per capita leads to an annual decrease in fatality rates.
A paper titled ‘Effects of alcohol on speeding and road positioning among young drivers: a driving simulator study’ co-authored by Z.Christoforou, M.Karlaftis, G.Yannis is recently published in the Transportation Research Record Science Journal. The paper focuses on the behavior of young drivers under the influence of alcohol, in a driving simulator experiment in which participants were subjected to a common predefined dose of alcohol consumption. Comparing behavior before and after consumption as well as across individuals and different BrAC levels allows for useful insights into driver behavior, as well as for suggestions on policy interventions. Results indicate strong differences in individuals, mainly because of differentiated driving experience and baseline driving skills. The results also designate reaction time and speeding as the most robust alcohol impairment indicators that affect driver choices directly. Most important, results suggest that the BrAC-speed curve across individuals is not monotonic over all BrAC intervals.
A presentation titled “Effects of GDP changes on road traffic fatalities” was given by NTUA Associate Professor George Yannis at the 15th Meeting of the International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of theInternational Transport Forum (ITF/OECD), which took place on 18-19 October 2012, in Amsterdam. A statistically significant relationship between annual GDP increase and fatality rate increase was demonstrated, as well as a statistically significant relationship between annual GDP decrease and fatality rate decrease. Behind these correlations, the causal explanations of the impact of economic recession to the recent impressive reductions in fatalities might include: a. less vehicle-kilometers (increased fuel prices, decrease of recreation mobility, less heavy goods vehicle traffic), b. less speeding (increased fuel prices, more economical and environment friendly driving, low drivers’ morale) and c. less risky driving (fewer young, inexperienced or elderly drivers who may afford vehicle ownership and travel).
The DaCoTA EU Project Team and the European Commission are introducing the new Road Safety Knowledge System website. The aim is to make it accessible to the Road Safety Community internationally and to inform and share the benefits of this research with the widest range of people – policy-makers, police, rescue and medical services, road systems designers, vehicle manufacturers, the insurance industry, infrastructure project organisations, transport user groups and representatives. A wide range of topics is covered including:
- Safety Issues: state of the art information on road safety topics,
- http://safetyknowsys.swov.nl/Safety_issues/Safety-issues.html
- Country Tools: country overviews, forecasts and indexes comparing EU countries,
- http://safetyknowsys.swov.nl/Countries/Countries.html
- Statistics: annual statistical reports, basic fact sheets, crash data, exposure data, performance indicators, driver attitudes and behaviour, causation information,
- http://safetyknowsys.swov.nl/Statistics/Statistics.html
- Methods: data specifications and protocols
- http://safetyknowsys.swov.nl/Methods/Methods.html
- Links: key links and summaries of a large number of road safety organisations.
- http://safetyknowsys.swov.nl/Links/Links.asp
The new international standard ISO 39001:2012specifies requirements for a road traffic safety (RTS) management system to enable an organization that interacts with the road traffic system to reduce death and serious injuries related to road traffic crashes which it can influence. The requirements in ISO 39001:2012 include development and implementation of an appropriate RTS policy, development of RTS objectives and action plans, which take into account legal and other requirements to which the organization subscribes, and information about elements and criteria related to RTS that the organization identifies as those which it can control and those which it can influence.
The Greek eΚΛΗΣΗ project is now in the final stages of creating an automatic warning system in case of a traffic accident. The first tests of the automatic emergency call system (eCall), within the frame of the pilot national research project eΚΛΗΣΗ (http://www.ecall-hellas.eu/), have been successfully concluded. The tests were performed on a prototype system and rooted emergency calls from the In Vehicle System (IVS), which was implemented by the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), an ERTICO partner, to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), which was implemented by SPACE HELLAS, through the mobile telecommunication network of COSMOTE. The national project eΚΛΗΣΗ prepares Greece for the implementation of the eCall service which will be obligatory for all EU member-states from end 2014.
Eighteen countries have a better performance than the EU average. Greece is ranked 26th in 2011. Two countries (LV, ES) reached more than 60% reduction of the rate fatalities per population.
Road fatalities have decreased by almost 44% during the period 2002-2011, leading to 23.322 less road fatalities (2011) in comparison to 2002. Nine countries (LV, ES LT, HU, EE, PT, DK, CZ, IE) have reached reduction of more than 50% for the period 2001-2011. The performance of Greece in fatalities reduction is ranked 20th.
A workshop on trasport in the Municipalities of Attica took place in Pefki on the 26th of September 2012. The workshop was organised by the the Association for Sustainable Development of Cities together with the Municipality of Likovrisi-Pefki.
NTUA road safety presentations concerned:
Strategic Plan for the improvement of road safety in Greece, 2011 – 2020, by George Kanellaidis
Policies and measures for the decrease of road accidents in the municipalities of Attica, by George Yannis
DG Mobility and Transport of the European Commission together with the Civitas Initiative organised the Conference on Urban Mobility on the 17th of September 2012 in Brussels in the framework of the European week of mobility. This conference marked the launch of the public consultation on the EU’s urban mobility activities in the context of the White Paper ‘Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system’.
NTUA Associate Professor George Yannis presented “Road safety in urban mobility policies”.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the US Department of Transportation launches the largest-ever road test of connected vehicle crash avoidance technology. Nearly 3,000 cars, trucks and buses equipped with “connected” Wi-Fi technology to enable vehicles and infrastructure to “talk” to each other in real time to help avoid crashes and improve traffic flow will begin traversing Ann Arbor’s streets today as part of a year-long safety pilot project. Conducted by University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), the road test, or model deployment, is a first-of-its-kind test of connected vehicle technology in the real world. The test cars, trucks and buses, most of which have been supplied by volunteer participants, are equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication devices that will gather extensive data about system operability and its effectiveness at reducing crashes.
Around 2,100 cyclists were recorded as killed in traffic collisions in 2010 in the 24 EU countries where the data is available, representing 7.2% of the total number of road deaths recorded in those countries. Over the 2001-2010 decade the number of cyclist deaths was reduced by just 39%, compared to the 43% reduction in the overall number of road deaths observed in the same countries. BIKE PAL is a pan European project that aims to offer cyclists a package of information, resources, and awareness raising experiences to help them significantly improve their safety on the roads. In this report the safety ranking of EU countries is illustrated.
A joint effort by the European Commission and the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations, the European Motorcyclists’ Forum is a platform for discussion on safety, mobility and the future of two-wheel transport in Europe. The forum took place on in Cologne on 3rd October 2012 and it will be open to all stakeholders interested in two-wheel mobility, where it will be possible to assess the problems, explore solutions, raise awareness and set the conditions for implementing actions.
The final SAFECYCLE conference took place in Vienna on 25 October 2012. The SAFECYCLE project, co-funded by the European Commission – DG MOVE, is investigating how ICT can be used to increase the safety of cyclists. ICT and ITS can increase the safety of cyclists. The results of the SAFECYCLE project will be presented (state of the art of ITS applications, SWOT analysis, CBA of selected applications, demonstration and deployment in European countries, recommendations, etc). This will be followed by a discussion with the project team and other experts about the results and the future of ITS and cycling in different sessions. All the conference presentations are available online.
The International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published the Research Report on Sharing Road Safety. This Report is the result of a three-year co-operative effort by an international group of experts representing 17 countries, with contribution from NTUA Associate Professor George Yannis. The purpose of this report is to emphasize the importance of sharing knowledge on the effectiveness of interventions and transferring of results internationally. Road safety policy is increasingly dependent on sound indicators of the effectiveness of interventions. Policy makers need not only to justify expenditure on safety in terms of effectiveness but to argue convincingly for measures in the face of sceptical and sometimes hostile lobbies. Monitoring and analysis of effectiveness is not without cost, and indicators that relate safety improvements to interventions, “Crash Modification Functions”, that are transferable from one situation to another are a valuable tool in spreading effective safety policies.
The 4th European Road Safety Day, organised by the European Commission and with the Cyprus Presidency and took place place on 25 July 2012 in Nicosia. The day was dedicated to young people and on the agenda were issues such as the creation of a road safety culture among young people, workshops on education, enforcement and risky behaviours.
