An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Analysis of the acceptance and cost benefit analysis of reducing the speed limit to 80 km/h on the interurban road network in Greece” was recently presented by Konstantinos Makrydakis. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, a special questionnaire was developed and answered by 408 travellers, from different parts of Greece, based on the stated preference method for 10 hypothetical scenarios with variations of the variables travel time, fuel consumption and probability of road accident with serious injury. The analysis calculated the investment costs and the impacts on traffic, road safety and the environment expressed in monetary units and showed that the reduction of the speed limit to 80 km/h on the interurban road network in Greece is considered to be economically very positive for the society, with a positive economic Net Present Value (ENPV=€170.7 million) and a high ERR (ERR=39.1%).   

A NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Investigating the influence of mobile phone use on driving behavior with Machine Learning analysis of imbalanced data” was recently presented by Konstantinos-Eirinaios Kaselouris. For classification and regression of mobile phone usage, telematics data from the OSeven telematics company were used as collected from naturalistic driving measurements. Mobile phone use was defined as an indicator of risky behaviour and classification was performed on two levels of driving behaviour (risky and not risky). Variables related to travel speed were found to be the most significant independent variables, while according to the classification evaluation metrics, the most appropriate model was considered to be that of ‘Linear Discriminant Analysis’.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Analysis of seatbelt and helmet use characteristics in Greece” was recently presented by Nikolaos Lagonikakos. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, data were collected from field observations during November-December 2021 in Greece and are related to seatbelt and helmet use, driver’s age and gender, the type of vehicle, the weather conditions, the time period and the road type in three areas (Athens, Thessaloniki and Larisa). Regarding the statistical models of seatbelt and helmet use by drivers, the results demonstrated that female drivers are more likely to use their seatbelt compared to male drivers. With regard to age, middle-aged and elderly drivers present lower probabilities of using a seatbelt while driving, compared to young drivers. Moreover, in adverse weather conditions the probability of using a helmet is lower in comparison with good weather conditions.  

A paper titled “An Evaluation of the Passing Process through Road – Vehicle Parameters Assessment” authored by Stergios Mavromatis, Vassilios Matragos, Konstantinos Apostoleris, Fotios Fotos and George Yannis, has been published in European Transport Research Review. The methodology is based on a realistic representation of the passing task with respect to roadway’s posted speed and the ability of the passing (examined) vehicle to perform such maneuvers. The analysis revealed that the difference between the speed of the passed vehicle and the posted speed value, as well as certain interactions of the assessed parameters impact excessively passing sight distances (PSDs), especially for values below 20 km/h. 

The European Commission adopted a Recommendation designed to help Member States support their towns and cities in cutting transport emissions and improving urban mobility. The Commission recommends putting in place national programmes to support urban mobility planning and implementation, managed by a dedicated office. Support for cities should include guidance materials, training programmes and capacity building, as well as technical expertise and financial support. Peer learning and networking between cities and towns will be encouraged through the sharing of good practices and that will lead to reinforcement of road safety.

The International Transport Forum (ITF) has recently published a new Report titled “Shaping Post-Covid Mobility in Cities“. This Report explores how urban mobility changed during the pandemic, focusing on changes in how people work, examining also implications on safety. Based on a review of international best practices, the report provides recommendations for better urban mobility in a post-Covid world.  

A paper titled “Texting while driving: a literature review on driving simulator studies” authored by Gheorghe-Daniel Voinea, Razvan Boboc, Ioana-Diana Buzdugan, Csaba Antonya and George Yannis, has been published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. The main findings revealed that texting while driving has negative effects on driving performance, affecting drivers’ divided attention and concentration, which can lead to potentially life-threatening traffic events. This review can serve as a basis for regulators and interested parties to propose restrictions related to using mobile phones in a vehicle and improve road safety. 

The World Road Association – PIARC launched an ambitious PIARC Knowledge Exchange project aiming at sharing knowledge about road safety, with the active contribution of NTUA and AIT, especially within the Low and Middle Income Countries with limited resources but also in more developed economies with different needs and priorities. The general theme of this month refers to Boosting Road Safety, as presented by the Secretary General Patrick Mallejacq. Throughout the year, PIARC will focus on the Safe System approach, addressing safe roads and roadsides, safe road users, safe vehicles and safe speeds.  

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled  “Well-Prepared Projects, A PIARC Collection of Case Studies“. This collection of case studies includes 17 cases from 10 different countries participating in this task force, plus one case dedicated to the use of the SOURCE platform in the preparation of transportation projects. The objective of this collection is to provide a variety of highly relevant examples from the real life. Each case outlines good practices in place in a country with a focus on a particular aspect of the project preparation.

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “Documents Relevant to Road Infrastracture and Transportation Security“. This Literature Review is the first step in the development of a full technical Report on road infrastructure and transport security. The document contains a review of literature on road infrastructure and transport security. The review focuses on the following topics: Legislations and policies, Standards, Studies and researches, PIARC reports, Other reports, Manuals and books, Case studies and best practices, Events and situations. It is also completed with conclusions and recommendations, a glossary and appendices.

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “Good Practices in Maintenance and Traffic Operation of Heavily Trafficked Urban Road Tunnels“. This Report makes amends in detailing the challenges and inherent good practices for maintenance and operation from traffic management, to design and renovation. It was cowritten by a panel of designers, owners, operators, policy makers in the field of tunnels, from around the world taking inspiration from previous PIARC Case Studies.

A new publication titled EU Road Safety: Towards “Vision Zero” has been recently published by the European Commission. This publication presents a comprehensive overview of projects managed by CINEA and funded under Horizon 2020-the EU’s R&I programme that develop, test and exploit innovative solutions for a safer road transport. This document calls for a new approach to safe mobility to be achieved by 2030: one rooted in safety as a core value, and not one in which safety may come second to factors such as cost, speed, aesthetics, or profits. It draws on work done in the past few years by the H2020 funded projects.   

The International Transport Forum (ITF) has recently published a new Policy Brief titled Improving motorcyclist safety: Priority actions for Safe System integration. This Brief summarizes the current extent of PTW usage worldwide, highlights pressing safety issues for motorcyclists and presents priority actions for improving motorcycling safety. It results from a series of virtual workshops on motorcyclist safety held in 2021 and co-hosted by the ITF and key roadsafety partners.  

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum(ITF/OECD) published the Road Safety Annual Report 2022 focusing on the development of road safety in the year 2021, the first year of the Second Decade of Action. The analysis draws on road safety data from 34 IRTAD member countries. It outlines short‑term trends for the year 2021 and long‑term trends for the period 2010‑19. The Report also presents provisional data on road deaths for the first semester of 2022 (January to June).  

A paper titled “The transformation of the insurance industry and road safety by driver safety behaviour telematics” authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Virginia Petraki, Armira Kontaxi and  George Yannis, has been published in Case Studies on Transport Policy. The aim of the present research is to expand on the aforementioned topics based on trends from recently published research and discuss the transformation of the insurance industry by driver safety behaviour telematics. An overview of the relevant technological advancements is provided, followed by the integration practices of telematics adopted by the insurance industry.  

A paper titled “One year of COVID-19: Impacts on safe driving behavior and policy recommendations” authored by Eva Michelaraki, Marios Sekadakis, Christos Katrakazas, Apostolos Ziakopoulos and  George Yannis, has been published in Journal of Safety Research. This study presented a descriptive overview of several driving behavior indicators as well as road crash data in correlation with the strictness of response measures in Greece and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that during the lockdown periods, speeds were increased by up to 6%, while harsh events were increased by about 35% in the two countries, compared to the period after the confinement. However, the imposition of another lockdown did not cause radical changes in Greek driving behavior during the late months of 2020.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Impact analysis of gasoline price on traffic conditions in Athens” was recently presented by Stylianos Peithis. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, data concerning traffic conditions, gasoline prices and a wide variety of traffic shaping factors such as weather data was collected. In order to accomplish this thesis’ objective Linear Mixed Effects models with random effect intercept were deployed using as independent variables various metrics with explanative power about traffic volume’s fluctuations. The results showed that the rise of gasoline prices has a negative impact on traffic volume while the impact of other factors such as weather conditions like temperature and rainfall are also substantial. Schools’ vacations, weekends and public holidays also have a decreasing impact in traffic conditions.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Imbalanced learning analysis for driving behaviour prediction using naturalistic driving data” was recently presented by Antonis Kostopoulos. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis data was collected through the telematics company OSeven, in order to classify and predict driving behaviour in terms of harsh accelerations and brakings occurences. More precisely this thesis intends to determine the most crucial predictors for the occurrence of harsh events, through a feature selection process and to identify two safety levels for harsh accelerations and brakings using Machine Learning techniques. The imbalanced classification results showcased that the total driving distance was the more impactful variable to harsh events occurence, whilst the best techniques for this particular imbalanced learning process, were achieved by Gradient Boosting and Multilayered Perceptrons algorithms.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Analysis of distraction characteristics due to mobile phone use in Greece” was recently presented by Marilena Merakou. The data used for the statistical analysis were collected from field measurements during November-December 2021 in Greece. The collected data are related to distraction measurements but also to driver’s age and gender, the type of vehicle, the weather conditions, the time period and the road type in three areas (in and around Athens, Thessaloniki and Larisa). The results demonstrate that old and middle aged drivers are less likely to use mobile phone while driving than younger drivers. It was also found, that van drivers tend to use mobile phone more often than drivers of any other vehicle type.  

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “Utilizing Data to Optimize Road Network Operations“. This work builds on the “Big Data for Road Network Operations” report from the 2016-2019 PIARC work cycle by providing current, real world examples of current application of big data concepts. The case studies included in this Report represent the current state of practice and highlight the progress being made by road network operators to utilize the growing amount of data available for road network operations. 

The Fondation VINCI Autoroutes has recently published the results of a unique study on “Sharing the road”. This Ipsos survey offers an overview of the behaviour of Europeans dealing with the coexistence of different modes of transport. This includes drivers of cars and motorised two-wheelers, cyclists, users of personal light electric vehicles (PLEVs) and pedestrians. According to the results, Greece has the highest rate of drivers (77%) who use the phone while driving in Europe (EU average 66%). 89% of Greek cyclists are afraid of other road users’ behaviour and 58% of them wear helmet when cycling. Moreover, 98% of Greek motorised two-wheelers fear the behaviour of other road users. On the other hand, 26% of Greek drivers open the door without checking if a cyclist is coming, whereas the European average is 36%.   

A paper titled “Investigating the Temporal Evolution of Driving Safety Efficiency Using Data Collected from Smartphone Sensors” authored by Dimitrios Tselentis, Eleni Vlahogianni and George Yannis, has been published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. Initial data analysis results to the most critical components of microscopic driving behaviour, which are used as inputs in the k-means algorithm to perform the clustering analysis. The main driving characteristics of each cluster are identified and lead to the conclusion that there are three main driving groups of the a) moderate drivers, b) unstable drivers and c) cautious drivers.

The International Transport Forum (ITF) has published a new Report titled Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety: 2022 Update. This Report tracks the progress in reducing the number of road traffic fatalities and serious injuries in cities between 2010 and 2020. It is a unique combination of traffic safety data collected in 32 cities participating in the ITF Safer City Streets network and compares trends in urban and national road safety.  

A paper titled “The role of values in road safety culture: Examining the relationship between valuation of freedom to take risk and accident risk among motorcycle riders and car drivers” authored by Tor-Olav Naevestad, Alexandra Laiou and George Yannis, has been published in Traffic Safety Research. The present study was based on survey data from car drivers and motorcycle riders from two countries with distinctly different road safety records: Norway and Greece. The results indicated that values focusing on freedom to take risk have an important role in road safety culture, presumably legitimizing and motivating risky driving/riding. 

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “State of the Art in Road Design Standards“. The document aims to identify similarities and differences between the approaches adopted in different countries and evaluates the possible need of their adaptation to the requirements of a rapidly changing world in the field of road transport systems: new technologies, changes in mobility modes (new propulsion techniques, new personal transport mode, and connected and autonomous driving) and availability of multiple diffused data sources. 

A paper titled “Evaluating Good Practices for the promotion of Electromobility using Mul-ti Criteria Analysis Methods” authored by Athanasios Zirganos, Foteini Orfanou, Eleni I. Vlahogianni and  George Yannis, is published in Case Studies on Transport Policy. For the purpose of this work , 20 Good Practices implemented in 9 European Regions aiming at diffusing electromobility were selected for applying the proposed methodology. The results showed that practices offering significant environmental benefits and improved energy systems, received higher scores than those contributing in raising public awareness or proving an advantage of electric vehicles over the conventional ones.  

A paper titled “Risk factors linked with elderly, truck and office worker drivers: a literature review in light of automated driving” authored by Marios Sekadakis, Christos Katrakazas, Peter Mörtl, Erika Santuccio and George Yannis, has been published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This study tries to identify and review risk factors that impact road safety and driving performance focusing more on three types of users, namely elderly drivers, truck operators, and office workers. The literature review was conducted using popular databases such as Google Scholar, Science Direct, and Scopus using specific search terms and prioritization criteria for studies coming mainly from Europe and the U.S, and after 2005. The aforementioned review will be exploited by the HADRIAN project, like any other HMI stakeholder, in order to develop a human-centered assessment methodology that will evaluate the way the human interacts with potential HMI configurations. Finally, the reviewed risk factors could guide stakeholders in accomplishing a safer transition from manual to autonomous driving for all road users. 

A paper titled “Investigation of traffic and safety behavior of pedestrians while talking on mobile phone” authored by Dimitra Typa, Dimitris Nikolaou and George Yannis, has been published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This study aims to investigate how hand-held cell phone conversation affects the behavior of pedestrians at signalized intersections in terms of both safety and traffic. In order to compare the behavior of distracted and non-distracted pedestrians, an outdoor environment experiment was carried out in real road conditions. Various demographic and behavioral characteristics were recorded, including mobile phone use. Initially, multiple linear regression models were developed in order to identify how cell phone use affects pedestrians’ speed. The results of the developed statistical models showed that pedestrians’ main traffic and safety characteristics were negatively impacted by distraction from hand-held cell phone conversation, as mobile phone use not only reduces pedestrians’ speed but also increases the likelihood that they will be involved in a collision with an approaching vehicle.

A paper titled “Driving Behaviour and its correlation with COVID-19 response measures: A neural network forecasting analysis” authored by Marios Sekadakis, Christos Katrakazas, Eva Michelaraki and  George Yannis, is published in Journal of Transportation Engineering. The NNAR modeling results showed that with higher stringency index, mobile use and driving speed tend to increase, whereas speeding duration demonstrates higher peaks. Interestingly, with stricter response measures, lower values were forecasted for speeding. According to the modeling outcomes, there is a direct effect of the COVID-19 response measures on driving behavior.  

A paper titled “A state-of-practice Review on Crash Occurrence Analysis and Hazardous Location Identification” authored by Paola Tiberi, Antonino Tripodi, Anastasios Dragomanovits, Katerina Deliali and  George Yannis, has been published in Advances in Transportation Studies. This study provided a state-of-practice review of the international literature on methods and applied practices for the identification of hazardous locations based on crash occurrence analysis. The analysis identified and summarized differences and similarities in the various methods and applied practices. Overall, this review is useful for practitioners so that they can identify potential ways of improving their applied crash occurrence methodology, while it will also inform researchers on paths for future research in the field of crash and safety analysis. 

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Cost benefit and acceptance analysis of reducing speed limits in Athens to 30km/h” was recently presented by Stella Roussou. This Diploma modeled Athenians preferences on speed limit reduction and performed the respective socio-economic cost benefit analysis (CBA) of the reduction of crashes and respective casualties, the costs incurred due to the increase in travel time and the benefit from reducing fuel consumption and environmental impact (CO2, NOx, PM emissions). The CBA revealed that the 30km/h speed limit is deemed economically highly viable and worth of implementing.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Critical factors of pedestrians self-declared behaviour and safety in Greece” was recently presented by Alexandros Ntontis. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, two binary logistic regression models and a Structural Equation Model (SEM) were developed, using data from the second edition of the ESRA survey. The results showed that a pedestrian who will engage more frequently in crossing the road with red pedestrian light is more likely to also engage in crossing the road at places other than at a nearby pedestrian crossing.  

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Knowledge Report titled Motorization Management for Development: An Integrated Approach to Improving Vehicles for Sustainable Mobility. This Report presents the World Bank’s Motorization Management (MM) framework, which is intended to support client countries in the development of policies and measures aimed at managing vehicle stocks in a proactive, phased, and systematic manner to make them safer, cleaner, and more fuel efficient. The MM framework reflects a series of policy considerations and programs that can be implemented to improve the quality of fuels and vehicles in a country’s stock.  

CAREC and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have recently co-published a Road Safety Engineering Manual titled “Star Ratings for Road Safety Audit“. This system, Star Ratings for Road Safety Audits, will help policy makers and practitioners involved in designing, upgrading, and rehabilitating roads to meet safety targets and reduce injuries from traffic accidents.  

The European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) published the Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility Roadmap, as part of the ERTRAC Roadmaps. According to the Report, in 2050, vehicles will have 100% real-time connectivity on the relevant road network and the transport management system will have the appropriate quality of service level, also for remote operation. All newly registered vehicles will have automation but in different levels.     

A paper titled “Public Acceptability of Environmentally Linked Congestion and Parking Charging Policies in Greek Urban Centers” authored by Virginia Petraki, Panagiotis Papantoniou,  Asimina Korentzelou and George Yannis, is published in Sustainability. A structural equation model (SEM) was developed using data from a questionnaire survey which provided a sample encompassing 733 respondent drivers from three main urban centers of Greece: Athens, Thessaloniki and Volos. Several statistical relationships were detected and quantified correlating the two examined urban environmental charging policies with five latent unobserved variables. Based on the results, public acceptability of environmental congestion charging policies and the public acceptability of environmental parking charging policies were found to be positively correlated with each other, meaning that a driver who supports one environmentally linked transport charging policy is more likely to support the other one as well.  

A paper titled “Data-driven estimation of a driving safety tolerance zone using imbalanced machine learning” authored by Thodoris Garefalakis, Christos Katrakazas and George Yannis, has been published in Sensors. This paper proposes a framework to identify the level of risky driving behavior as well as the duration of the time spent in each risk level by private car drivers. The results showed that Random Forests and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) outperformed the rest of the classifiers with 84% and 82% overall accuracy, respectively, and that the maximum speed of the vehicle during a 30-second interval, is the most crucial predictor for identifying the driving time at each safety level. 

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Analysis of speeding characteristics in Greece” was recently presented by Spyridon Krouskos. The data used for the statistical analysis were collected in the period of November-December of 2021 in Greece, and were related to vehicle speed measurements, but also to the simultaneous recording of the type of vehicle, the type of road, the weather conditions and the time period. The results showed that motorcycle drivers are more likely to exceed the speed limit than passenger car drivers, while it was estimated that the opposite is true for the other types of vehicles. It was also found that drivers on urban roads are more likely to exceed speed limits than drivers on motorways.  

A NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Detection of dangerous driver behavior with widescale data from smart recording systems and machine learning techniques” was recently presented by Hector Kamvoussioras. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, data were collected through a simulator experiment in order to classify and predict driving behaviour. Ridge classifier, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest and XGBoost models were developed. It was revealed that Random Forests and XGBoost models showed the most reliable results in the prediction ability, with 95% accuracy of the three driver categories (i.e. normal, dangerous, avoidable accident). Speed, headway and hands on the wheel found to be the most important variables to predict crash risk.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Comparative analysis of socioeconomic indicators on road safety in the Greek Regions” was recently presented by Nikolaos Papadopoulos. A cluster analysis was performed leading to four clusters: Islands, Western & Southern mainland Greece, Northern mainland Greece and Attica. The results depicted the different geographical characteristics, economic level, mobility patterns and road behaviors of the regions, which are also reflected in road safety outcomes.   

An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Identification of driver’s risky behavior level and duration with machine learning techniques” was recently presented by Theodoros Garefalakis. For the purpose of this Diploma Thesis, high resolution data related to driving behavior were collected through a driving simulator experiment. In the first part of the analysis, four machine learning algorithms were developed to classify driver behavior into one of three risk levels, with the ‘Random Forests’ algorithm scoring the highest performance. In the context of investigating the influence of driving factors to identify driving behavior, the distance traveled, speed and speed limit emerged as the most important. In the second part of the analysis, the effect of driving characteristics on driving duration at different stages was examined through three regression algorithms. The results showed that the maximum speed was the most important variable, which negatively affects the driving duration at each safety level.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Impact of Pandemic on National and International Air Transport Demand at Athens International Airport” was recently presented by Stamatios Tsakoulis. This Diploma Thesis investigated the factors of the pandemic that influenced the air transport demand at Athens Airport and revealed that the rate of vaccination coverage of the population is the most critical variable of recovery of air traffic while the severity of the lockdown is an important inhibitory factor. In addition to that, low-cost airlines showed the highest correlation with air traffic, while airlines with chartered flights in countries with temporary traffic had a significant influence.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis called “Free Public Transport in Attica Region” was recently presented by Vaggelis Goulas. This Diploma Thesis revealed that the possibility of changing means of free public transport depends largely on the cost, time, comfort, beliefs, transportation characteristics and demographic characteristics of the respondents. The faster and more comfortable the journey, regardless of cost reduction, the more likely it is to opt for free public transport instead of staying in the existing means of transport.  

A paper titled “Impact of texting and web surfing on driving behavior and safety in rural roads” authored by Marios Sekadakis, Foteini Orfanou, Dimosthenis Pavlou, Maria Oikonomou, Christos Katrakazas and George Yannis, is published in International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology. For the purpose of the study, driving data were gathered through a driving simulator experiment with 37 young drivers. Additionally, a survey was conducted to collect their demographic characteristics and driving behavior preferences. During the experiment, the drivers were distracted using contemporary smartphone internet applications i.e., Facebook Messenger, Facebook and Google Maps. In the end, the results showed that driving behavior and safety among young drivers were both significantly affected by the investigated internet applications. 

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on a revision of the rules governing the roadworthiness of vehicles in the EU, planned for mid-2023. The results of the public consultation will feed into the revision of the EU’s roadworthiness rules, including those on periodic roadworthiness testing, roadside inspections for commercial vehicles, and vehicle document registration. The Commission invites all those interested to express their opinions on the impact of the current legal framework, as well on the possible policy measures that could be taken and the impact they may have 

A paper titled “Innovative road safety measures” authored by Stergios Mavromatis and  George Yannis, has been published in Advances in Transportation Studies an international Journal. Τhis editorial collection represents a snapshot of current advancements in innovative road safety measures focusing on roadway infrastructure, safety modelling, human
factors, vulnerable road users and automated driving. Some key conclusions arisen from the present Special Issue comprise of the need of co-consideration of all crash factors for accurate results, the importance of digitalisation and technological advancements on boosting road safety, and the significance of implementing innovative and evidence based road safety measures for multiplying the safety benefits. 

The European Commision put the new Vehicle General Safety Regulation into effect.  The rules for the advanced driver assistant systems will first apply to new vehicle types from 6 July 2022 and to all new vehicles from 7 July 2024. The new safety measures will enhance the protection of passengers, pedestrians and cyclists across the EU, expectedly saving over 25,000 lives and avoid at least 140,000 serious injuries by 2038.   

The International Transport Forum (ITF) published recently a new Report titled The Safe System Approach in Action with the active participation of NTUA. Road crashes kill over 1.3 million people every year worldwide and seriously injure millions more. A Safe System approach to road safety can drastically reduce road deaths – but how can it actually be put in place? This Report provides experience-based guidance on implementing the Safe System approach worldwide.    

The European Commission has added to its library of European Road Safety Observatory road safety data and analytical resources with the publication of Thematic Reports on the use of seatbelts and child restraint systems, serious injuries through road crashes and on driver impairment due to alcohol, drugs and medicines. The aim of these Reports is to aid understanding of the causes and impacts of road crashes, with the ultimate aim of achieving “vision zero” of zero road deaths or serious injuries in Europe’s roads by 2050. 

The European Commission has launched EU pilot projects to assess safety of infrastructure. These pilot projects are carried out to test methodologies for the network-wide road assessments developed with the active contribution of NTUA, required under the Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive (RISM). The Network-wide road assessments allow national authorities to identify those sections of road where the opportunities to improve safety are the greatest and where targeted investment should deliver the biggest improvements. 

The European Commission marked the International Level Crossing Awareness Day. Almost 300 people per year die in crashes at level crossings, representing around 30% of all railway deaths. The Commission has published a thematic report on this issue, setting out the situation regarding collisions at level crossings and measures the that could be taken to prevent them. In the Western Balkans region, the Transport Community has launched an awareness campaign to try to reduce the number and severity of collisions at railway crossings. 

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Report titled Detecting Urban Clues for Road Safety: Leveraging Big Data and Machine Learning Report. The Report presents opportunities to use new technologies to improve current methods for data collection and analysis for various road safety assessments. This guidance note provides a practical guide for using new data sources and analytical methods for road safety analysis in different types of projects that may impact road infrastructure or risk-related factors.  

The World Health Oganisation (WHO) recently published the revised edition of the Manual on Drink-Driving: A Road Safety Manual for Decision-Makers and Practitioners. The Manual provides guidance for decision-makers and practitioners to reduce the prevalence of drink driving and associated road trauma. It draws on experience from countries that have succeeded in achieving and sustaining reductions in alcohol-related road trauma, and includes recommendations for developing and implementing drink driving legislation, and advice on how to monitor and evaluate progress.  

A paper titled “Modelling the relationship between covid-19 restrictive measures and mobility patterns across Europe using time-series analysis” authored by Marianthi Kallidoni, Christos Katrakazas and George Yannis is published in European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research. Data on walking and traffic were exploited and several time series analysis models were developed, in order to estimate mobility during pandemic in 25 EU countries. School closing was found to be the most important exogenous factor for describing driving or walking, while “Stay at home” orders had not a significant effect on the evolution of people movements.

The European Commission published a Study titled Prevention of Driving under the Influence of Alcohol and Drugs. Among its conclusions, the Study argues in particular that taking steps to mitigate drink driving, such as lower permitted blood alcohol levels or alcohol interlocks, would be particularly relevant for young or novice drivers and for drivers of heavy goods vehicles. However, it also finds that there is a lack of data on drug-driving fatalities and a need to develop more accurate and usable drugs screening devices. 

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published 4 Reports on Road Safety in Africa: Road Safety Data in Africa, Africa Status Report on Road Safety in Africa, Road Safety Strategies for African Cities and Road Safety Culture in Africa (with the active contribution of NTUA), analysing findings for road safety on the African continent. The main goal of these Reports is to support the quest for reaching the target of a 50% reduction of road fatalities in the Africa by 2030.    

World Bank published a Knowledge Report titled Saving Lives Through Private Investment in Road Safety. This Report examines the enabling environment for structuring investable road safety projects in a sample of countries, looking at the barriers and opportunities, and proposing risks and mitigation strategies, like blended finance mechanisms and stable revenue sources, for long-term sustainability of road safety investments.  

The Horizon 2020 project HADRIAN  (Holistic Approach for Driver Role Integration and Automation Allocation for European Mobility Needs) issued recently the 2nd Newsletter, with updates on the main project activities, focusing on studying the effects of haptic feedback, optimized head-up displays, adding predictability of the automated drive, and improved visual and auditory display elements and many more – all in the context of a holistic view on automated driving. 

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) organised with great success the Road Safety Strategies and targets for the Decade 2021-2030 Webinar, which was held online, on 10 March 2022. The Webinar focused on new road safety strategies and targets. NTUA contributed actively with the following presentation:

•  The Greek National Road Safety Plan 2021-2030: Linking and Monitoring Road Safety Targets, KPIs and Measures

Τhe European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published the 42nd PIN Flash Report titled How Traffic Law Enforcement Can Contribute to Safer Roads with the active contribution of NTUA. Exceeding speed limits, drink- or distracted- driving, and failure to wear a seatbelt are among the important factors leading to death and serious injury on European roads. Road safety laws have been adopted to guide drivers in their behaviour. Many comply with them willingly. Others, however, would be less likely to comply if it were not for fear of being detected and sanctioned. This is where traffic law enforcement comes in. This Report gives an overview of the current state of road traffic enforcement across the EU, with recommendations for action.   

Together for Safer Roads Global Coalition published a Report titled Driver Attitudes Towards Vehicle Safety Technology.  Fleet Managers now have access to GPS-based telematics and in-cab driver assistance technology that is often paired with in-cab dash cameras—all of which can keep drivers and the public safe. Since many drivers and even some managers are critical of the technology, significantly impacting adoption and use, this Report helps to better understand what makes drivers reluctant to adopt in-cab camera technology and identify what can be done to positively influence perceptions.

A paper titled “Spatial predictions of harsh driving events using statistical and machine learning methods” authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Eleni Vlachogianni, Constantinos Antoniou and George Yannis is published in Safety Science. Spatial models including Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression, Bayesian Conditional autoregressive models (CAR), and variations of EXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) are implemented. The purpose is to: (i) explore parameters affecting frequencies of harsh driving events through causal spatial models in an urban road network and (ii) assess the predictive performance of models by testing the transferable components of these models in a new urban network test area. The models are trained and evaluated in terms of accuracy and transferability for Harsh Breaking (HB) predictions in separate areas of Athens, Greece. Findings indicate key geometrical characteristics affecting HB frequencies per road segment. 

A paper titled “Development of a Roadmap for the Implementation of a Sustainable Mobility Action Plan in University Campuses of Emerging Countries” authored by Tormo-Lancero M., Valero-Mora P., Sanmartin J., Sánchez-García M., Papantoniou P., Yannis G., Alonso F. and Campos-Díaz E. is published in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. In this paper a customizable standardized Roadmap design is proposed, which consists of two documents: a tactical document that provides a global and sequential vision of the entire plan, and an operational document that details the actions for each strategic line. This roadmap is accompanied by a catalog of objectives, measures, and cost and impact indicators. This design might be instructive for universities because of its universal characteristics in Emerging Countries. To ensure this, it is necessary to apply this roadmap and carry out the corresponding evaluation. 

The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) has published a Report titled: Guidelines for Conducting Road Safety Data Reviews. Since road safety data definitions and collection methods must converge into standard international criteria, this Report is designed to support reviewers in the assessment of road safety data collection; the complete range of safety data should be considered. This task can be complicated because collection of road safety data is often not achieved by activities dedicated to this purpose, but rather through piggybacks on other sources.  

A paper titled “Driving and Alzheimer’s Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment: A systematic review of the existing guidelines emphasizing on the neurologist’s role“, authored by Petros Stamatelos, Alexandra Economou, Leonidas Stefanis, George Yannis and Sokratis Papageorgiou is published in Neurological Sciences. The review of this paper included eighteen G/Rs, referred to drivers with dementia and 9/18 referred to drivers with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). A common approach among G/Rs is the initial trichotomization of patients in safe to drive, unsafe to drive, and undetermined cases, which are referred to a second-line evaluator. Although extensive multi-disciplinary research has provided useful information for driving behavior of cognitively impaired individuals, we are still far from a widely accepted approach of driving ability evaluation in this increasing population. A comprehensive assessment from a multi-disciplinary team in which the neurologist plays a critical role seems to be required, although this has not yet been implemented in any G/Rs. 

A paper titled “The role of values in road safety culture: Examining the valuation of freedom to take risk, risk taking and accident involvement in three countries” authored by Tor-Olav Nævestad, Alexandra Laiou, Tova Rosenbloom, Rune Elvik, and George Yannis is published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. National focus on individual freedom versus paternalistic values is a fundamental theme, which defines the status of traffic safety in different countries. Linear and logistic regression model results indicate that Greek drivers value freedom to take risk in traffic higher than drivers from Norway and Israel. Greek drivers also expect higher levels of risk taking from other drivers in their country, they report higher levels of risky driving themselves, and are more often involved in accidents. Thus, it seems that values have an important role in Road Safety Culture (RSC), legitimizing and motivating risky driving, which are related to accidents. 

The New Information System of the  Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport was presented by the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, responsible for Transport Mr. Michalis Papadopoulos, the General Secretary of Transport Mr. Giannis Xifaras and the General Manager of ONEX IoT, Mr. Konstantinos Nikolouzos. The new Information System ensures the digitization and the faster processes of Transport Services. The new digital network will integrate applications and tools, which might be highly useful for the improvement of the road safety, such as the vehicle registrations, the driving licenses and the controls of the Vehicle Technical Inspection Centers. 

The International Transport Forum (ITF) published a Report titled Streets That Fit: Re-allocating Space for Better Cities. This Report looks at how street space has typically been allocated in the past, examines the rationale for street space allocation and describes how to measure space consumption for mobility purposes. The study also explores by way of a simulation how new mobility services and travel modes interact when a limited, dynamic and demand-responsive re-allocation of street space is introduced in a mid-sized city.  

The International Transport Forum (ITF) published a Booklet titled Road Safety in Cities: Street Design and Traffic Management Solutions presenting measures that effectively reduce road traffic deaths and serious injuries in cities. The Booklet covers urban street design, traffic management and improving mobility options. Measures are illustrated with examples reported by cities collaborating in the ITF Safer City Streets network and include information on cost and effectiveness.  

The World Road Association – PIARC published a Report titled “Road Related Data and How to Use it“. 20 recommendations, referenced within the report, provide a clear framework for road administrations to systematically compare their current practices and develop tailored action plans. These also complemented by a further 4 recommendations for PIARC to consider, to supporting member organizations in their journey to deliver better services through smarter use of data. 

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “Smart Roads Classification“. This Special Project presents an exploratory study about the feasibility of a Smart Roads Classification system. Identifying which steps should be done first becomes crucial, especially when addressing safety issues. One of the activities of the Special Project was exploring the feedback about follow-up proposals from several stakeholders. 

The World Road Association – PIARC recently published a Report titled “Improving Road Tunnel Resilience, Considering Safety and Availability – PIARC Literature Review“. This Review focusses on key tunnel topics: a) General concepts and approaches for resilience management, b) Legislation, standards, strategies and policies, c) Criteria and requirements for resilience, availability and safety as a mandatory constraint, d) Various events and future developments to be resilient for (including weather, climate change, natural hazards, traffic incidents, etc.), e) Possible measures to improve road tunnel resilience for these events, f) Organisational and managerial aspects of resilience improvement. 

The European Platform on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans of Eltis recently published a Topic Guide on Safe Use of Micromobility Devices, which proposes best practice and key recommendations on the integration of micromobility in urban mobility planning, with the goal to support cities in achieving a safer use of micromobility devices in urban areas. The Guide also highlights the need to urgently integrate e-scooters into cities’ Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).  

The International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF/OECD) published the Road Safety Annual Report 2021 focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic impact on road safety performance in 2020, identifying how the pandemic affected both mobility patterns and road fatalities. The analysis draws on data on road deaths from 34 member countries of the IRTAD Group and it also contains the IRTAD Country Reports highlighting the latest road safety developments in each country.  

Elsevier has  published the International Encyclopedia of Transportation on May 2021. Containing almost 600 articles, the Encyclopedia brings a cross-cutting and integrated approach to all aspects of transportation from a variety of interdisciplinary fields including engineering, operations research, economics, geography and sociology in order to understand the changes taking place. Emphasising the interaction between these different aspects of research, it offers new solutions to modern-day problems related to transportation. NTUA Associate Professor George Yannis and Assistant Professor Eleonora Papadimitriou actively contributed with the following chapter: 

•  Road Safety 

The International Transport Forum (ITF) published a Report titled Artificial Intelligence in Proactive Road Infrastructure Safety Management, reflecting the discussions at a Round Table of Experts from 33 Organisations and 15 Countries, chaired by NTUA Prof. George Yannis. This Report examines and determines the most relevant cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in a transport planning context for accident prevention on an entire road network and it explores the possibility of using computer vision to acquire relevant information and the capability of modelling and mapping high-risk locations. It also offers recommendations to stakeholders on the development and appropriate use of lifesaving AI solutions.   

In the framework of the development of the National Road Safety Strategic Plan for the period 2021-2030, the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport has launched a wide and organized Open Consultation with all road safety stakeholders. This Plan is being developed with the scientific support of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of NTUA and aims to reduce the number of road fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2030.  Any citizen or stakeholder can be informed and actively participate in the Open Consultation through the dedicated website: 

A paper titled “Modelling self-reported driver perspectives and fatigued driving via deep learning” authored by Alexandros Zoupos, Apostolos Ziakopoulos and George Yannis is published in Traffic Safety Research.  A binary logistic regression model was trained to provide causal insights on which variables affect the likelihood that a driver engaged in driving while fatigued, whereas a Deep Neural Network (DNN) was subsequently trained on the data, slightly outperforming the binary logistic model. Results demonstrate that drivers reporting driving under the influence of drugs, fatigue, or alcohol, as well as speeding, safety, and texting while driving or drivers who were more acceptable of fatigued driving were more likely to have recently driven while fatigued, and from the results of this paper it was concluded that declared fatigued driving behavior can be predicted from questionnaire data, providing new insights to fatigue detection. 

A paper titled “Quantifying the implementation impacts of a point to point automated urban shuttle service in a large-scale network” authored by Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Maria Oikonomou, Eleni Vlachogianni and George Yannis is published in Transport Policy. The results of this paper indicate that the AUSS operation has a significant effect on cumulative travel time per segment and CO₂ emissions per segment only during the scenario of mixed operation with traffic during off-peak hours. Road traffic density was found to be positively correlated with both travel time and CO₂ emissions, while the penetration of both cautious and aggressive CAVs was found to be negatively correlated with both indicators. 

A paper titled “Effect of Apolipoprotein E4 on the Driving Behavior of Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment or Mild Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia“, authored by E. Stanitsa, A. Economou, I. Beratis, D. Kontaxopoulou, S. Fragkiadaki, V. Papastefanopoulou, D. Pavlou, P. Papantoniou, C. Kroupis, J. Papatriantafyllou, L. Stefanis, G. Yannis and S. Papageorgiou is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.  The results of this paper indicate that the lower speed variability of APOE4 carriers in the absence of neuropsychological test differences, as possible result of driver compensatory strategy. Simulated driving may be a sensitive method for detecting performance differences in the absence of cognitive differences.  

A paper titled “Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on collisions, fatalities and injuries using time series forecasting: The case of Greece“, authored by Marios Sekadakis, Eva Michelaraki, Christos Katrakazas and George Yannis is  published in Accident Analysis & Prevention. Three different Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) time series models were implemented on road casualties data for the period 2010-2020 in order to compare the observed measurements to forecasted values intended to depict assumed conditions; namely, without the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate that fatalities and slightly injured rates were significantly increased during the lockdown period and the subsequent months. Overall, it can be concluded that a worse performance was identified in terms of road safety. Since subsequent waves of COVID-19 cases and other pandemics may reappear in the future, the outcomes of the current study may be exploited for the improvement of road safety from local authorities and policymakers. 

Based on the new interactive map of EUROSTAT which concerns the road safety performance of European Union regions (NUTS 2), the incidence rate for road fatalities in the EU fell by 32% between 2009 and 2019. The most rapid declines were recorded in Ciudad de Melilla in Spain (-100%), while two regions in Greece (Sterea Ellada and Anatoliki Makedonia-Thraki), Wien in Austria, Västsverige in Sweden, and Luxembourg also recorded falls of more than 60%. For 2019, the highest incidence rates were recorded in Prov. Luxembourg in Belgium (171 road fatalities per million inhabitants), Região Autónoma da Madeira (165) and Alentejo (156) in Portugal. On the other hand, the lowest incidence rates were recorded in Wien in Austria (6), Stockholm in Sweden (9) and Berlin in Germany (11). 

A paper titled “Did the COVID-19 pandemic influence traffic fatalities in 2020? A presentation of first findings” authored by Fred Wegman and Christos Katrakazas was recently published online in IATSS Research. The results of this research show that the number of fatalities in 2020 was 17.3% lower in the 24 participating countries compared with the baseline period and the reduction is almost seven times higher than annually in these countries in the period 2010–2019. The reduction in the number of fatalities is associated with less mobility, but a comprehensive analyses should take into account more crash and injury risk factors. 

The European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) with the active contribution of NTUA published the Safe Road Transport Research Roadmap, as part of the ERTRAC Roadmaps. According to the Report, injury figures have remained nearly constant from 2013 to 2019, and even if preliminary fatality figures show a massive reduction in 2020, this can most likely be attributed to lower traffic volumes during the COVID-19 crisis.  

The European Commission – DG Move published a handbook, which has been developed in the study ‘Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Charging and Internalisation of Transport Externalities’, commissioned by a consortium led by CE Delft.  The objective of this study is to assess the extent to which the ‘user pays’ and the ‘polluter pays’ principles are implemented in EU Member States and in other developed countries. This Report provides an overview of the methodologies and input values that can be used to provide state-of-the-art estimates for all main external costs of transport. Furthermore, the Report and corresponding excel file present the total, average and marginal external costs for all relevant countries.   

The 5th Newsletter of the EU funded Horizon 2020 project Levitate (Societal Level Impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles) was recently released focusing on the results of the latest Levitate Webinar titled “Social Level Impact of Connected and Automated Vehicles“, on the next webinar on “Automated road transport – impact assessment methodologies” and on several events and news on Road Safety. 

The scientific journal Sustainability organised with great success the publication of a special issue under the theme: “Challenges and Strategies for Sustainable Transportation and Traffic Safety”. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to Traffic safety impact assessment of sustainability measures, Cost-Benefit effects of sustainable safety interventions and Policies for the integration of the dimension of sustainability in traffic safety interventions. Guest editors of this special issue were Athanasios Theofilatos, Apostolos Ziakopoulos and Ioanna Pagoni.  

A NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Critical Impact Factors of pedestrian traffic in Athens Downtown” was recently presented by Loukas Stroggylis. This Diploma Thesis revealed that the factors affecting pedestrian traffic are significantly related to the motorized traffic, as well as road infrastructure, land use and Covid-19 Pandemic. After crucial conclusions to quantify the influence of each variable were drawn, comments were made on the positive effects of pilot mobility interventions, critical issues were considered and finally, proposals were made for the improvement of the pedestrian traffic in the center of Athens and for further research.  

An NTUA Diploma Thesis titled “Road Safety Benchmarking in Greek Regions” was recently presented by Kostas Michailoglou. Data of road accidents and the main characteristics of each Region were used for the period 2010-2019 and two linear regression models were developed for all Regions of Greece, with and without Attica. THe models results indicate that the number deaths per 100.000 population depends on the income per inhabitant and the number of vehicles, the number of physicians (with Attica) and the density of each district (km²/inhabitant) and the unemployment (without Attica). Subsequently, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used for the benchmarking of the 12 Regions (except of Attica) based on their performance on road safety. According to this classification, Thessaly, Ionian islands and Central Macedonia appear to have the best road safety performances, while Peloponnese and South Aegean have the worst ones.