A research titled ‘Measuring accident risk exposure for pedestrians in different micro-environments’ co-authored by S.Lassarre, E.Papadimitriou, G.Yannis and J.Golias was published in the Journal Accident Analysis and Prevention in November 2007. A model of pedestrians’ crossing behaviour along a trip is developed, based on a hierarchical choice between junctions and mid-block locations and taking account of origin and destination, traffic characteristics and pedestrian facilities. A complete framework is produced for modelling pedestrians’ exposure in the light of their crossing behaviour. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated on an artificial network and a first set of results is obtained from the validation of the models in observational studies. 
The 14th International Conference on Road Safety on Four Continents was organized by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), with active support of GRSP (Global Road Safety Partnership), FERSI (Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes), TRB (Transportation Research Board) and ECTRI (European Conference of Transport Research Institutes) and took place in Thailand in November 2007.
NTUA presented ‘Implementing the european road safety observatory in the Safetynet project’. 
The first International Conference on Road Safety and Simulation RSS2007, organized by the Inter-Universities Research Centre on Road Safety (CRISS) at the University of Roma Tre took place in Rome in November 2007.
NTUA presented ‘A review of international data files with risk exposure data’. 
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched the Road Safety Legislation Database, containing information on legislation around a number of risk factors for road traffic injuries – speed limits, seat belt and child restraint use, helmet use, blood alcohol limits, daytime running lamps, mobile phone use.
The second IN-SAFETY workshop took place in Brussels in October 2007. The overriding objective of the workshop was to gather the views of the audience on the near-final results of the IN-SAFETY project. This provided an overview of the pilot tests undertaken in a real traffic environment in Athens, Turin and Stuttgart and in a driving simulator in Sweden. 
The 14th World Congress on ITS took place in Beijing, China in October 2007, with the theme of “ITS for a Better Life”.
NTUA presented ‘Effects of driver accident history on ITS acceptance’.
This study investigates Greek driver attitudes towards specific systems that have the potential to improve road safety, and traffic and environmental conditions.
The second European Road Safety Day of the European Commission has been celebrated in Paris on October 13th, 2008. The second road safety day is dedicated to Road Safety in our Cities, as about two thirds of the accidents and one third of all road fatalities occur in urban areas, often affecting the most vulnerable road users.
A research titled ‘Effects of driver nationality and road characteristics on accident fault risk’ co-authored G. Yannis, J. Golias and E. Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion in September 2007. Data from the national accident database of Greece were used to calculate accident relative fault risk rates under induced exposure assumptions. A log-linear analysis was then used to examine first- and higher-order effects within three or more variable groups. Results clearly indicate that foreign drivers in Greece are at increased risk.
Attiki Odos SA together with Attikes Diadromes SA, the Operations Company of Attiki Odos, within their wide range of activities for the promotion of road safety, organized with high success the first Road Safety Seminar on Incident Management, where all aspects of more efficient accident management were highlighted by all the authorities and organizations involved in the field.
The European Union Road Federation (ERF), the Brussels programme of the International Road Federation (IRF), issued a discussion paper highlighting all aspects of Safety on Motorway Workzones, containing not only analyses but also best practices, proposals for all stakeholders and complete references to existing work in the field.
A research titled ‘Road casualties and enforcement: distributional assumptions of serially correlated count data’ co-authored by G.Yannis, C.Antoniou and E.Papadimitriou from the NTUA, was published in the Journal Traffic Injury and Prevention in September 2007. Road safety data are often in the form of counts and usually temporally correlated. Using the generalized linear model framework, four distributional assumptions are considered: normal, Poisson, quasi-Poisson and negative binomial, and appropriate models are estimated. Monthly casualty and police enforcement data from Greece for a period of six years (January 1998–December 2003) have been used.
A research titled ‘Road Safety in Greece’ authored by G.Yannis from NTUA, was published in September 2007 in the Journal of IATSS. Basic characteristics such as population, road network length and development of the car ownership for the last ten years, road accident and casualty trends are presented. Moreover, the trends related to the enforcement of driving infringements related to road safety are presented. Road accident characteristics by road user characteristics and area type as well as road accident risk rates by vehicle type, age and gender of the driver and vehicle type and area type are finally presented.
The European Road Safety Charter is an initiative of the European Commission aiming to engage as many as possible civil society organisations to the improvement of road safety in Europe, in order to achieve the common goal: halving the number of traffic fatalities by 2010. Ten Greek Organisations have signed so far the Charter.
The World Road Association (PIARC) presented recently the Guidelines for Road Accident Investigation for Road Engineers, aiming to assist road engineers detect the road infrastructure deficiencies that influence an accident’s occurrence, and to guide them in the implementation of appropriate improvement measures.
A research titled ‘Accident risk of foreign drivers in various road environments’ co-authored by G.Yannis, J.Gollias and E.Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the Journal of Safety Research in 2007. Data from the national accident database of Greece are used in a hierarchical log-linear analysis. Results confirm that foreign drivers in Greece are at increased risk. However, immigrant permanent residents appear to have a lower risk compared to tourists, regardless of the road environment.
According to a recent NTUA research co-authored by G.Yannis, E.Papadimitriou and J.Gollias from NTUA, published in Accident Analysis and Prevention Journal, dealing with the ‘Multilevel modeling for the regional effect of enforcement on road accidents’, the effect of the intensification of Police enforcement of drinking and driving on the number of road fatalities at national and regional level was investigated, demonstrating that there are significant spatial dependences among road accidents and enforcement, which are interpreted better by qualitative similarities of the regions than geographical adjacency.
The 11th World Conference on Transportation Research took place in Berkeley, in June 2007.
NTUA presented:
Comparative assessment of road safety performance in Greece
Accident risk factors of young drivers and targeted counter measures
The Handbook of Road Safety Measures is the published final outcome of the ROSEBUD European research project dealing with Road Safety and Environmental Benefit-Cost and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis for Use in Decision-Making.
The New Road Code prepared by the Hellenic Ministry of Transport has been voted by the Parliament and it is in force. The new Road Code is summarized in a specially designed leaflet, prepared with the scientific support of NTUA.
In June 2007, ETSC published the PIN Annual Report. The country data showed that France, Luxembourg and Belgium have reached the greatest reductions in the number of yearly road deaths between 2001 and 2005. Highest levels of seat belt wearing are recorded in France, Germany and Malta, while the Czech Republic, Belgium and Germany have achieved greatest improvements in the area of drink driving over the last decade.
A workshop on setting the stage for the European Road Safety Observatory organised by the Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research (SWOV) took place in Amsterdam in June 2007, aiming at addressing the connection between policy questions, knowledge and data.
NTUA presented ‘Powered two-wheelers road safety’.
The European Transport Safety Council presented recently a Review on the social and economic consequences of road traffic injury in Europe, highlighting the completeness and accuracy of official road accident statistics, the long-term impacts of traffic injury and the social disparities in road accident risk.
During the Global Road Safety Week (23-29 April 2007) a Road Safety Conference, as well as an exhibition of road safety artworks were organised by the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Road Safety Institute Panos Mylonas under the auspices of the Ministry of Transport.
During the European Road Safety Day on April 27th, 2007, organised by the European Commission it was stated that the European action plan continues to deliver results and the target of saving 25.000 lives on Europe’s roads by 2010 is attainable. Greece is lagging behind with a fatalities decrease of 11% in comparison to the 22% average decrease in Europe of 27.
NTUA made the ‘Presentation of the second Strategic Plan for Road Safety’.
The week of 23 to 29 April 2007 has been declared by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation as the First United Nations Global Road Safety Week. It is targeted at young road users including young drivers who are over-represented in road accidents.
In April 2007, ETSC published the PIN Flash. This report indicates that in Europe improvements in drink driving contribute their share to enhancing road safety. However, in nine countries, insufficient progress on reducing drink driving deaths has slowed down overall improvement over the last decade.
The European Commission presented the first ever complete edition of road safety performance indicators prepared by the European Road Safety Observatory within the SafetyNet integrated project. Country profiles as well as country comparisons provide among others an insight to the reasons of the low level of road safety in Greece.
In February 2007, ETSC published the PIN Flash. Seat belt wearing in the front seats of cars varies among European countries from less than 70% to more than 95%. The ranking showed that France, Germany and Malta reach rates of over 95% seat belt use among front seat occupants. Also Sweden, Norway, the U.K. and the Netherlands showed good levels of 90% and higher. In Hungary, Italy and Belgium, on the other hand, rates were only around 70%, while no rates at all were available from Greece, Lithuania and Slovakia leaving room to assume even lower usage.
