ACEM, under the framework of eSUM project, has released a booklet in seven languages with indications on which equipment to choose. Motorcycling apparel can help motorcycle, scooter and moped riders reducing the effects of accidents. Nonetheless the benefits of good quality motorcycling clothing are still widely underestimated. 
A research titled ‘Theoretical framework for modeling pedestrians crossing behavior along a trip’ co-authored by E.Papadimitriou, G.Yannis and J.Golias from NTUA was published in ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering in April 2010. A topological approach of pedestrian trip characteristics and crossing decisions is proposed, allowing consideration of distinct patterns of crossing behavior along a trip. Specific techniques from the family of discrete choice models are proposed for determining the number and location of pedestrians’ crossings, accounting for the hierarchical and dynamic nature of pedestrians’ decisions along a trip and a field survey method is presented. 
The International Transport Forum (ITF) organised the 10th meeting of the International Traffic Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) in Paris on 12-13 April.
NTUA presented:
Collection, transfer and analysis of road safety data – the Dacota project’
Road Safety Trends in Greece
A research titled ‘Estimation of the real number of road casualties in Europe’ co-authored by J.Broughton, M.Keigan, G.Yannis, P.Evgenikos, A.Chaziris, E.Papadimitriou, N. Bos, S.Hoeglinger, K.Perez, E.Amoros, P.Hollo and J.Tecl was published in the Journal Safety Science in March 2010. Within this research, the police under-reporting of non-fatal road accident casualties in eight European countries was examined by means of a common methodology applied in each country. For almost all countries, the actual number of serious casualties according to the new proposed definition was found lower than the number of police-recorded serious casualties.
A paper titled ‘Risk and protection factors in fatal accidents’ co-authored by E.Dupont, H.Martensen, E.Papadimitriou and G.Yannis was published in the Journal Accident Analysis and Prevention in March 2010. Two methodological issues were specifically discussed, namely the accident-size factors (the number of vehicles in the accident and their level of occupancy) and the comparability of the baseline risk. It is argued that – although these two issues are generally at play in accident severity analyses – their effects on, e.g., the estimation of survival probability, are exacerbated if the analysis is limited to fatal accident data.
A research titled ‘Heavy vehicle age and road safety’ co-authored by Z.Christoforou, M.Karlaftis and G.Yannis from NTUA, was published in the Proceedings of ICE – Transport in February 2010. Findings suggest that older vehicles have a 4.5 times higher accident involvement probability in comparison with newer vehicles, while accidents involving older CMVs have a 4 times higher probability of resulting in a fatality. Further analysis suggests that the mean per capita cost to tax payers from CMV accidents surpasses 100A per year, more than half of which is attributed to older vehicles. Measures to mitigate the problem are suggested.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Investigation of the impact of mobile phone use to driver behaviour and safety with the use of driving simulator’ was presented by Leonidas Roumpas in February 2010. Lognormal regression and binary logistic methods were used to investigate the influence of mobile phone use as well as various other parameters on the mean speed and the probability of an accident. From the models application it appears that mobile phone use leads to a statistically significant decrease of the mean speed in urban and interurban environment and to an increase of accident’s probability, probably due to distraction of driver attention and as a result, delayed reaction time at the moment of the incident. It appeared that in rainy conditions drivers did not present different driving behaviour, however, they had a high probability of being involved in an accident.
A Ph.D. Thesis titled ‘Pedestrian behaviour and safety models in urban road networks‘ was presented by Eleonora Papadimitriou in February 2010. A topological consideration of the urban road network was opted for, allowing to identify basic properties of pedestrian trips and crossings, an algorithm was also developed for the estimation of the choice sets related to crossing decisions along a trip and a discrete choice modeling approach is proposed for crossing choices. The proposed methodology was demonstrated by means of models implementation on a typical urban trip for different scenarios.
The Transportation Research Board (TRB) 89th Annual Meeting took place in Washington, D.C., in January 2010. NTUA presented ‘Weather Effects on Daily Traffic Accidents and Fatalities: A Time Series Count Data Approach‘ . The impact of weather conditions on traffic safety is a topic that has attracted considerable interest in the literature.
A research titled ‘A critical assessment of pedestrian behaviour models’ co-authored by E.Papadimitriou, G.Yannis and J.Golias from NTUA by was published in the Journal Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour in 2009. In this paper an exhaustive review of the existing route choice models for pedestrians is presented. The results of this review reveal a lack of an overall and detailed consideration of pedestrian behaviour along an entire trip in urban areas. Moreover, the need for an integrated approach based on flexibility, disaggregation and more determinism is identified.
In November 2009, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning road injuries. Road deaths represent only the “tip of the iceberg” of traffic collisions. For every road death in the EU, at least 44 road injuries are recorded, of which 8 are categorised as “serious”. In Romania, Norway, Hungary and Spain changes in road deaths and serious injuries followed almost a similar pace, in Luxembourg, France, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Sweden reductions in road deaths exceeded by far the reductions in recorded serious injuries, whereas in Slovenia, Latvia, Ireland and Greece injuries decreased faster than deaths.
The impact of speed enforcement on road safety has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Traffic law enforcement influences driving behaviour through two processes: general deterrence and specific deterrence. Positive effects of speed enforcement on both speeding behaviour and the number of crashes are reported.
Road safety of novice drivers has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Novice drivers pose a greater risk to themselves, their passengers and to other road users than other drivers do. In most countries, novice drivers, under the age of 25, account for the largest share of traffic crashes and fatalities.
Mobile telephone use as a major road safety issue has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. A range of studies conclude that the use of a mobile phone while driving distracts the driver and causes various changes in driving behaviour that negatively affect traffic safety. Driver reaction times are 30% slower when telephoning while driving than driving with BAC levels of 80mg/100ml and 50% slower than under normal driving conditions.
Road safety of Powered two wheelers has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. PTW’s are more popular in southern European countries. Greece has the highest ownership rate with 150 mopeds and 100 motorcycles per 1000 inhabitants.The total number of PTW fatalities in 2005 in Europe was 7030, which is 15% of all traffic fatalities. 50% of fatally injured moped riders were under the age of 25.
Speeding as a major road safety issue has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Speeding is one of the biggest road safety problems, consisting as a key factor in about 30% of fatal road accidents. It also greatly increases the risk of an accident. Some 40- 50% of drivers drive faster than the recommended speed limit and 10- 20% exceed the limit by more than 10 km/h. Not only does speeding raise the risk of a crash, it also increases the likelihood of severe injuries or death from an accident.
Post-impact care is a strategy which aims to reduce the severity of injury consequences once a road traffic crash has occurred. Post-impact care has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Despite the fact that the cost of years of life lost from road trauma is larger than from cancer or cardio-vascular diseases, the attention paid by health policymakers, by the medical community and by the road safety field to trauma-related care and research has been disproportionately small so far.
The road safety problem of Pedestrians and Cyclists has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Walking and cycling are transport modes where relatively unprotected road users interact with traffic of high speed and mass, 20-40% of all journeys are travelled by cycle or on foot. Of all traffic fatalities in EU countries, the proportion of pedestrian fatalities is about 17% and the proportion of cyclist fatalities is about 6%.
Work-related road safety has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Work-related motor vehicle road crashes occur at the workplace and in driving associated with work (excluding commuting). Most work-related crashes involve company cars. Scientific understanding and monitoring of key problem areas, solutions and their effects on road and occupational crash injury, however, is limited and needs to be developed further.
Vehicle Safety has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Improving vehicle safety is a key strategy used in addressing international and national road casualty reduction targets and in achieving a safer road traffic system. Vehicle safety addresses the safety of all road users and currently comprises measures to help crash avoidance and crash protection. Substantial and evidence-based improvements have been made in the last 15 years and research has identified large scope for enhancing vehicle safety further.
The road safety problem of older drivers has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Older drivers have the second highest fatality rate. Only the youngest group of drivers (18-and 19-year olds) has a higher fatality rate. Older drivers are not so much a risk to others, but they are at risk themselves. This means that older drivers are not a risk to others’ transport safety, but they are frailer, making them vulnerable to personal injury or fatality risk in the event of a crash.
An introduction to the safety rating systems in use internationally has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Safety rating systems present impartial information on aspects of traffic system safety. Safety ratings in use today are objective tools for the assessment and improvement of aspects of the safety of vehicles, the road network, work-related road safety and international safety performance. Safety ratings in use either predict safety outcomes for given designs or provide a retrospective assessment based on crash data.
The elements of the road safety management system have been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Based on current knowledge, fatal and long term crash injury is largely predictable, largely avoidable and a problem amenable to rational analysis and remedy. Safety is produced, just like other goods and services and the production process is viewed as a management system with three levels: institutional management functions produce interventions, which in turn produce results.
Road design has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Many of the basic principles for good road design were developed up to 40 years ago, and are still valid today. Although further refinements have been explored since then, there still remains uncertainty about relationships associated with design details and recent engineering innovations. Road infrastructure should be designed taking account of the same injury tolerance criteria as those developed for vehicle occupant protection and pedestrian impacts, so that roads and vehicles together provide an effective safety system.
Quantitative road safety targets has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Quantitative targets represent the road safety results which a country or jurisdiction wishes to achieve over a given time frame. Targets provide the focus for the national road safety strategy and the level of their ambition drive decisions about coordination needs, legislative needs, funding and resource allocation, promotion needs, monitoring and evaluation, as well as research, development and knowledge transfer.
A Cost-benefit analysis has been released by the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. A recent road safety impact assessment is used to illustrate the findings of cost-benefit analyses of road safety measures, showing which measures are found to be the most cost-effective. There is still a large potential for improving road safety by using cost-effective road safety measures. Analyses in Norway and Sweden – both of which are comparatively safe countries – suggest that fatality reductions of about 50 % can be realised by applying cost-effective measures.
Fatigue as a road safety issue has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Fatigue leads to a deterioration of driving performance, manifesting itself in slower reaction time, diminished steering performance, lesser ability to keep distance to the car in front, and increased tendency to mentally withdraw from the driving task. Fatigue is a major factor in a large proportion of road crashes (range 10-20%). A person who drives after being awake for 17 hours has a risk of crashing equivalent to being at the 0.05 blood alcohol level (i.e. twice the normal risk).
eSafety is defined as a vehicle-based intelligent safety systems which could improve road safety in terms of exposure, crash avoidance, injury reduction and post-crash phases. eSafety has been analysed at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. The evaluation of eSafety measures is a young science. However, research in the EU and elsewhere has confirmed that the following measures could make a large contribution to efforts to meet ambitious safety targets. the EU and Member States should establish a monitoring system to evaluate the design, development and implementation of new in-vehicle technologies and their short, medium, and long-term impacts on road safety.
Alcohol as a major road safety issue has been highlighted at the recently released synthesis of the European Road Safety Observatory as prepared by the SafetyNet project. Alcohol is one of the biggest road safety problems, about 25% of all road fatalities in Europe are alcohol related whereas about only 1% of all kilometres driven in Europe are driven by drivers with 0.5 g/l alcohol in their blood or more. Compared to a sober driver the crash rate of a driver with a BAC of 0.8 g/l (still the legal limit in 3 of 25 EU-member states) is 2.7 times that of sober drivers. Not only the crash rate grows rapidly with increasing BAC, but the crash also becomes more severe.
The New Road Code as revised by the Revising Committee of the Hellenic Ministry of Transport has been voted by the Parliament and it is in force.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Pedestrian behaviour characteristics in urban roads’, was presented by Sofia Tourou in July 2009. This diploma thesis has been awarded with the Ecocity award 2010. An experimental process in real road conditions was carried out. A linear regression model was developed to investigate the impact of certain parameters in the walking speed. A binary logistic model was also developed to investigate the impact of the parameters in the pedestrians’ decision on which section to cross and in the route choice. From the models application it appears that the age and the gender of the pedestrian, the low pedestrians’ flow and the choice of the most pleasant route have statistically significant impact to the walking speed. The pedestrians route choice is influenced by the possibility to walk often, the choice of the fastest route and the number of the direction’s changes.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank jointly issued the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention on World Health Day 2004, dedicated by the WHO to the improvement of global road safety. The report’s publication signaled a growing concern in the global community about the scale of the health losses associated with escalating motorization and a recognition that urgent measures had to be taken to sustainably reduce their economic and social costs. Implementing the report’s recommendations has become a high priority for low and middle-income countries and the guidelines presented in this report have been prepared to assist this task.
WHO has published a European status report on road safety. In 2008, WHO carried out a global assessment of road safety since then. This publication provides an overview of the results for the European Region and 49 country profiles on road safety, based on the data collected in the survey. In the WHO European Region alone, road crashes result annually in 120,000 deaths, 2,4 million injuries and a great economic burden. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among people 5–29 years old.
The World Health Organization (WHO) released the Global status report on road safety, which highlights that road traffic injuries are a global health and development problem. More than 1.2 million people die on the world’s roads every year, and as many as 50 million others are injured. Over 90% of the deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries.
In May 2009, CEDR published a report titled ‘Traffic incident management’. Good incident management is an important goal for all concerned with the management and safe operation of road networks. Research indicates that non-injury incidents contribute substantially to incident-related congestion. The most powerful tool in minimising the impact of incidents is the provision of fast, direct, high-quality information in a standard format that is acceptable across Europe.
In April 2009, ETSC published a PIN Flash concernig safer cars across the EU. European citizens do not benefit equally from improvements in passive safety as huge differences persist between countries in the market penetration of safe cars. Sweden, Ireland and Norway are the countries with the highest proportion of cars awarded 5 stars for occupant protection among new cars sold in 2008. Hungary, Portugal and Spain are the countries with the highest proportion of cars awarded 3-stars for pedestrian protection, 5 being the maximum, closely followed by Israel and Greece.
The fourth in this series of good practice manuals, titled ‘Seat-belts and child restraints: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners‘, jointly prepared by GRSP, WHO, the FIA Foundation and the World Bank, focuses on seat-belts and child restraints. The manual is a practical guide to implementing, enforcing and evaluating seat-belt and child restraint programmes, and consists of a series of ‘how to’ modules.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Ιnvestigation of the minimum gap from the vehicle accepted by the pedestrian for urban street mid-block crossing’ was presented by Athanassios Theofilatos in March 2009. A lognormal regression model was developed in order to investigate the influence of certain parameters in the minimum pedestrian gap acceptance. It appeared that the distance from the vehicle, illegal nearby parking that may affect pedestrian’s visibility, the vehicle size and possible companions have statistically significant impact to the minimum gap acceptance. Concerning the choice to cross the road or not, the waiting time and the gap between the pedestrian and the vehicle strongly define his decision.
A study titled ‘Linking Emergency Medical Department and Road Traffic Police casualty data: a tool in assessing the burden of injuries in less resourced countries’ co-authored by E.Petridou, G.Yannis, A. Terzidis, N. Dessypris, E. Germeni, P.Evgenikos, N.Tselenti, A.Chaziris and I. Skalkidis was published in the Journal Traffic Injury Prevention in February 2009. The study aimed to assess the magnitude of road traffic injuries in a country missing a formal linkage system of police with hospital data, quantify the under-reporting and produce a convenient algorithm exploring its constituent components.
In February 2009, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning children’s road safety. Road safety of children has improved considerably in all 30 countries covered by PIN over the past decade. Portugal achieved the best annual average reduction in child road mortality of 15%. Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Czech Republic, Greece and Romania performed poorly with average annual reductions of less than 5%, while EU’s average annual reduction is 7%.
In November 2008, UNECE published the first edition of the Transport Review, dedicated on road safety. Transport, especially road traffic safety, is the area in which global cooperation is inevitable as hundreds of millions of people who travel on the roads every day take a risk. The risk include excessive speeding, driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, failure to use seat-belts and helmets, poorly designed or insuffi ciently maintained road infrastructure, and the use of vehicles that are old, poorly maintained or lacking safety feature. People’s safety must be preserved and improved. This can be achieved through the concerted eff orts of several players, public and non-governmental alike. Even though certain achievements are obvious, further improvements should be made.
In October 2008, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning roads safety in the capitals of the EU. Dublin, Lisbon and Oslo scored the best year-to-year reduction in the number of people killed per 100,000 residents, with respectively 12%, 10% and 9% average annual reduction. In Athens the annual reduction in the number of people killed per 100,000 residents is less than the EU’s average annual reduction (4.1%).
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Mobile phone use and traffic characteristics‘ was presented by Panagiotis Papantoniou and Nikolaos Petrelis in July 2008. Appropriate data were collected through an experimental process in real road conditions of urban environment. From the mathematical application of the models, it appears that the cell phone use leads to statistically significant decrease of traffic speed and space headways.
The manual ‘Drinking and driving: A road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners‘, was launched by the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) ahead of the UN Road Safety Week. The good practice manual Drinking and driving, a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners, proposes simple, effective and low-cost solutions to prevent drinking and driving that can be implemented on a national or local level.
A research titled ‘Impact of enforcement on traffic accidents and fatalities: A multivariate multilevel analysis’co-authored by G.Yannis, E.Papadimitriou and C.Antoniou from NTUA was published in the Journal Safety Science in June 2008. In this research, distributional assumptions of the Poisson-family are considered for the counts of road accidents and fatalities of the various regions of Greece. The combination of the model results with additional behavioural data led to the conclusion that enforcement intensification has a direct impact on the improvement of driver behaviour and attitude and subsequently on the reduction of road accident and fatalities.
In May 2008, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning road safety of the elderly. Older people account for one sixth of European population. Portugal and Israel scored the highest average annual reduction (over the period of 1997-2006) of 8% and 7% respectively in elderly road mortality expressed as number of deaths among older people per 100,000 elderly population. France ranks third with an annual average reduction of over 6%. Greece among other countries follows with reduction above the EU average of 3.7%.
The European Transport Safety Council presented recently a Review on vulnerable riders and safety implications in the EU, including recommendations on how to improve PTW safety in Europe.
A research titled ‘Testing a framework for the efficiency assessment of road safety measures’ co-authored by G.Yannis, V.Gitelman, E.Papadimitriou, A.S.Hakkert and M.Winkelbauer was published in the Journal Transport Reviews in May 2008. An exhaustive review of standard methodologies and practices related to cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses was carried out. Moreover, a number of case-studies are performed, concerning the efficiency assessment of various road safety measures in different countries. The procedures and barriers involved in the use of efficiency assessment techniques at different levels of decision-making are also highlighted, by means of feedback received during and after the various case-studies.
The third good practice manual, titled ‘Speed management: A road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners’, jointly prepared by GRSP, WHO, the FIA Foundation and the World Bank, on speed management, was launched by GRSP ahead of the United Nations General Assembly discussion on road safety later this month. Speed has been identified as a key risk factor in road traffic injuries, influencing both the risk of a road traffic crash as well as the severity of the injuries that result from crashes.
In April 2008, CEDR published a report titled ‘Best Practice for Cost-Effective Road Safety Infrastructure Investments‘. The report was drawn up by the NTUA. This Synthesis can be considered as a complete proposal for best practice on road safety investments, which could be used as a reference by any Road Authority for the selection of the most appropriate road safety interventions.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Impact of mobile phone use on vehicle speed’ was presented by Xenia Karekla and Froso Kontodima in March 2008. An experimental process in real road conditions was carried out. Linear and lognormal regression methods were used to investigate the influence of mobile phone use and certain other parameters in the variable examined. From the models application it appears that the mobile phone use leads to statistically significant decrease of traffic speed. Furthermore, men and women drivers reduce the traffic speed similarly when they are using mobile phone.
In February 2008, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning motorway safety. Over 3,200 people are killed annually on EU motorways. The number represents just 8% of the total number of road deaths in the EU and has been going down steadily. The motorways are safest in Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Great Britain, where less than two people are killed on average for every billion km driven. The number of deaths on EU motorways has been decreasing in 2001-2006 by 5% yearly, yet it has clearly tended to increase in Greece, Sweden, Hungary and Slovenia.
A research titled ‘Assessment of pedestrian safety measures in Europe’ co-authored by G.Yannis, G Kanellaidis, J.Dimitropoulos and N. Muhlrad was published in ITE Journal in December 2007. An extensive hierarchical inventory of pedestrian safety measures took place, classifying them according to the functions served and the main safety problems addressed. This comprehensive synthesis showed that mechanisms should be ensured for converting policy into practice at the level of “street design” and guaranteeing coordination between actors of different responsibilities and disciplinary backgrounds.
A research titled ‘A mixed logit model for the sensitivity analysis of Greek drivers’ behaviour towards enforcement for road safety’ co-authored by G.Yannis and C.Antoniou from NTUA, was published in the Journal European Transport in December 2007. Traffic violations are among the leading causes of road accidents. In this research, the sensitivity of Greek drivers to a hypothetical intensification of police enforcement for speed violations and improper overtaking is analyzed, using stated preference data. It can be argued that while the “typical” Greek driver may not be particularly risk-prone, there are segments of the population that show a tendency to violate traffic laws.
In December 2007, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning roads safety of motorcyclists. In 2006 at least 6200 Powered Two-Wheeler (PTW) riders were killed in road crashes in the EU representing 16% of the total number of road deaths while accounting for only 2% of the total kilometres driven. Norway, Switzerland, Denmark and Finland are the least dangerous places to ride, with average rider deaths between 30 and 45 per billion kilometres. While Greece, among other countries, is just below the EU average of 86 riders killed per billion km.
A research titled ‘Mobility patterns of moped and motorcycle riders in Greece’ co-authored by G.Yannis, J.Golias, I.Spyropoulou and E.Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the Journal Trasportation Research Record in December 2007. A nationwide travel survey targeted at two-wheeler and passenger car active drivers was carried out. The results of the survey were exploited in two ways; first, the usage of the examined vehicle types in Greece was investigated in relation to driver characteristics, through the calculation of the respective sample distributions. The results demonstrated a clear difference between vehicle ownership rates and vehicle usage rates per vehicle type.
A research titled ‘Modelling crossing behaviour and accident risk of pedestrians’ co-authored by G.Yannis, J.Golias and E.Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the Journal of Transportation Engineering in November 2007. A methodology for modeling pedestrians crossing behavior along an urban trip is presented, as well as an algorithm for the estimation of accident risk along the trip. For that purpose, existing models are exploited and further developed.
The European Commission has recently adopted the proposal for a Directive on Road Safety Infrastructure Management dealing with a package of instruments ensuring that safety is integrated in all phases of planning, design and operation of road infrastructure.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
The Eurostat issued the yearly update of the road safety regional differences demonstrating that not only the three EU regions with the lowest road safety performance are Greek but also that 7 Greek regions are among the 10 EU regions with the lowest road safety performance.
The 3rd IRTAD Seminar took place in Brno – Czech Republic in November 2006.
NTUA presented:
Building the European Road Safety Observatory – SafetyNet
A comprehensive set of road safety basic statistics
Enhancement and exploitation of the existing European road accident data
The Road Safety PIN Talk was organized by the European Transport Safety Council and the Road Safety Institute Panos Mylonas in Athens on November 15th, 2006. This Road Safety PIN Talk enters within the framework of the Road Safety Performance Index of the European Transport Safety Council, having as objective to monitor and boost progress of road safety policies at national and EU level.
NTUA presented ‘The role of Performance Indicators in the implementation of Road Safety Programmes’ .
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Correlating macroscopic road safety parameters in the European Union’ was presented by Anna Tsoumani in November 2006. Linear and non-linear regression models were developed and resulted in quantification of the impact of each variable to the number of fatalities in road accidents. The ratio of the number of road fatalities to the number of vehicles reduces by the increase of the ratio of the number of vehicles to population and secondly, the shape of the fatalities curve (ascending, stable and descending) depends on the ratio of the number of vehicles to population.
In June 2011, ETSC published a PIN Flash concernig seat belt use. In Sweden, nearly 70% of new passenger cars were equipped with seat belt reminders for the driver seat. In Luxembourg, this percentage is estimated to be 64% and in Germany 63%. In the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Italy and Greece, this is however less than half of the new passenger cars.
In October 2006, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research reliesed the National Road Safety Outlook for 2005-2020, Advancing Sustainable Safety. Sustainable Safety is an answer to the lack of rad safety. It is a type of aproach that, incidentally, has been commonplace in other types of transport modes for much longer time under the name of ‘inherently safe’.
In September 2006, ETSC published a PIN Flash concerning EU countries road safety performance. The first ranking under the Road Safety Performance Index showed that some countries are contributing fully to the European target, even though the majority do not. During the period 2001-2005 France has achieved an outstanding 35% drop, closely followed by Luxembourg with 34%. In Belgium, the reduction has been of the order of 27%. The reduction for Greece was 16%.
In July 2006, ETSC published the first Road Safety PIN Flash. The Road Safety Performance Index (so-called “Road Safety PIN”) will compare Member States’ performance in promoting safe road user behaviour, infrastructure and vehicles, as well as sound and evidence-based policymaking.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Correlation of pedestrian safety impact parameters’ was presented by Marianna Aggelidaki and Manos Vernandos in July 2006. The use of log-linear analysis was chosen and applied for the statistical analysis of data from roadaccidents involving pedestrians for the period 1996 – 2003 in Greece. The results of the analysis suggested that children under 15 years old and elderly over66 years old appear to have higher probabilities of fatal injury, while no relationship wasproved between the probability of fatal injury, gender and nationality of the pedestrian.
The manual ‘Helmets: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners‘ is one of a series of documents produce by an informal consortium (GRSP, WHO, the FIA Foundation and the World Bank) that aims to provide guidance to countries on how to implement some of the recommendations identified within the World Report, and thus improve their overall road safety record. This manual provides practical advice to road safety practitioners on how to achieve a much higher proportion of users of two-wheeled vehicles wearing helmets.
The OECD/ECMT have published a joint report titled Young Drivers: the road to safety, according which road crashes are the single greatest killer of 15 – 24 year-olds in OECD countries. Young drivers account for about 27% of driver fatalities across OECD countries, although people in the same age group represent only about 10% of the population.
The European Transport Safety Council presented recently a Review on the accident data in the enlarged EU. The review examined the situation in the 25 countries of the EU in relation to data on road safety and draws up to concrete set of actions for improving these data. It covers all aspects from data collection, gathering and entry into databases, to theis processing, analysis and dissemination of results.
In April 2006 ACEM Publications released a handbook that describes the specific needs of riders and contains guidelines for those responsible for road design and road maintenance. Powered Two Wheelers differ in their use of the road in a number of ways from other vehicles and riders have different needs. The handbook includes recommendations and examples from all over Europe.
A research titled ‘Perception of road accident causes’ co-authored by W.Vanlaar and G.Yannis was published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention in 2006. The objective of this study was to validate this model empirically to answer three questions: How do European drivers perceive the importance of several causes of road accidents? Are there important differences in perceptions between member states? Do these perceptions reflect the real significance of road accident causes?
A high level expert meeting on road safety, organised by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology took place in Vienna in January 2006.
NTUA presented ‘The use of efficiency assessment tools: Solutions to barriers’.
Efficiency Assessment Tools are the Methods used to judge the efficiency of an intended measure/policy based on the highest return in monetary terms.
A paper titled ‘Designing the European Road Safety Observatory’co-authored by P.Thomas, A.Morris, G.Yannis, P.Lejeune, P.Wesemann, G.Vallet and W.Vanlaar was published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion in December 2005. The European Commission has decided to meet the demand for traffic accident data and road safety information by establishing a new European Road Safety Observatory.
The European Commission published the Road Safety Country Profiles, containing key road safety statistical data and development in all EU countries. NTUA has contributed to the country profile for Greece, in which all recent road safety trends are highlighted, together with the key issues addressed at the national strategic plan prepared by NTUA.
An ad-hoc Meeting on Traffic Performance was organised by UNECE and the Danish Delegation and took place in Copenhagen in December 2005.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Comperative investigation of risk parameters in the Greek motorways’ was presented by Antonis Chaziris in October 2005. Data concerning the number and the characteristics of participants in traffic accidents were used, as well as raw accident data, which became available from NTUA’s Traffic Accident Database. The results of this research consisted of four mathematic regression models and two polynomial relations of cross-correlation of the accident indicator and the traffic volume, concerning the motorway of Attiki Odos.
In May 2005, the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers reported an approach towards road safety in Greece and internationally. About 120 people are killed each day in Europe after being involved in a road accident. Measures should be taken in order to reduce the number of people killed in the roads of the EU.
A research titled ‘Modelling driver choices towards accident risk reduction’co-authored by G.Yannis, A.Kanellopoulou, K.Aggeloussi and D.Tsamboulas from NTUA, was published in the Journal Safety Science in April 2005. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted and the stated preference method was used to develop an explanatory model. the application of the model revealed that absolute value of additional trip time – not its percentage change – seems to play the most important role in driver choice towards accident risk reduction independently of the trip duration.
A research titled ‘Driver age and vehicle engine size effects on fault and severity in young motorcyclists accidents’ co-authored by G.Yannis, J.Gollias and E.Papadimitriou from NTUA, was published in the Journal Accident Analysis and Prevention in November 2004. Data from the national accident database of Greece were used to calculate accident severity and relative fault risk rates. Accident severity modelling revealed a significant second-order interaction between severity, driver age and two-wheel engine size. On the contrary, no second-order effects were identified in fault risk modelling. Moreover, a significant effect of driver age on accident fault risk was identified. The effect of engine size was not significant.
A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Parameters affecting Greek drivers’ willingness to pay for the avoidance of road accidents’ was presented by Apostolia Salata and Emmanouil Androulidakis in October 2004. The “Stated Preference Method” was developed along with a questionnaire-based survey followed by a statistical analysis. The outcome has shown that the individual willingness to resort to paying depends on driving experience, reasons of driving outside urban areas, perceived risk, age, annual family income, number of children and reduction of the probability of being involved in a road accident.
The World Health Organization (WHO) released the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention, which emphasizes the role of public health in the prevention of road traffic injuries and covers the fundamental concepts and prerequisites of road traffic injury prevention, the intensity and impact of road traffic injuries, key determinants and risk factors, intervention strategies, and recommendations.
