Yannis G., Mavromatis S., Laiou A.”Integrated speed management strategies in local communities in South East Europe”, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on road safety in local community, Kragujevac, Serbia, April 2015.

Local communities may have a key role in the improvement of road safety through the exploration of specific developments to promote safer roads and mobility as well as to improve road user behavior. Among others, such activities include the development of a speed management strategy. In EU speed is included among the three main risk factors on the roads. Moreover, speeding is a primary factor in about one third of fatal accidents and an aggravating factor in all accidents. A systematically applied integrated speed management strategy would certainly provide road safety benefits. The objective of this research is to present the procedure for the development and the implementation of an integrated speed management strategy in South East Europe based on experience from several research projects carried out at NTUA (including the recent ROSEE project) and good practice and advice from the international literature adjusted for the specific needs of the South East Europe. All critical elements of such an integrated speed management strategy are analysed and discussed, with concrete proposals for the objectives, the action areas, the implementation modalities and the monitoring and evaluation of the strategy.  It is concluded that the success and effectiveness of an integrated speed management strategy depends directly not only to strong political support but also to a systematic monitoring of road safety level and the continuous evaluation of the measures implementation.