The International Conference on Better safety data for better road safety outcomes, co-organised by the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum (ITF) and the Iberoamerican  Road Safety Observatory (OISEVI) took place with great success in Buenos Aires on 13-14 November 2013. More than 350 road safety experts, decision makers and stakeholders from more than 40 countries participated in the discussions focussing on various aspects of data improvement and quality as the best ally in the development of road safety strategies, as well as of data analysis in IRTAD, OISEVI and other countries.

More than 40 presentations covered all aspects of traffic safety data and their role in road safety policy, including safety indicators, spatial analysis, data quality, simulation tools, politics and health data crossing, capacity development, safety management, safety tendencies and data usage. 

NTUA presentation concerned: ‘Improving fatalities forecasting in times of recession through the use of panel time series models’. 

A paper titled ‘State-space based analysis and forecasting of macroscopic road safety trends in Greece‘ co-authored by Constantinos Antoniou and George Yannis from NTUA, is now published in Accident Analysis and Prevention Journal. In this paper, macroscopic road safety trends in Greece are analyzed using state-space models and data for 52 years (1960–2011). Alternative considered models are presented and discussed, including diagnostics for the assessment of their model quality and recommendations for further enrichment of this model. Important interventions were incorporated in the models developed (1986 financial crisis, 1991 old-car exchange scheme, 1996 new road fatality definition) and found statistically significant. Furthermore, the forecasting results using data up to 2008 were compared with final actual data (2009–2011) indicating that the models perform properly, even in unusual situations, like the current strong financial crisis in Greece. Forecasting results up to 2020 are also presented and compared with the forecasts of a model that explicitly considers the currently on-going recession.  

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Multilevel investigation of road accident characteristics in Greek cities‘ was presented by Dimitris Spanakis in March 2013. For this analysis, a database was developed with road accident data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority in 30 Greek cities for the period 2006-2010, which has been complemented with cities demographic data: population, vehicle fleet, and per capita income. From the results, useful conclusions are deducted for the impact of some of the examined parameters in the number of fatalities, serious and slight injuries in Greek cities, such as existence of median, operation of technical night lighting, accident type, vehicle type, casualty age and vehicle fleet. From the second level analysis it was found that there is significant variation of the impact of the vehicle fleet of each city to the number of casualties in road accidents, which was quantified. 

The European Union Road Federation and the Spanish Road Association presented on March 20th, 2013 in Brussels, the final results of the White Roads Project, the cumulative effort of 3 years of work. The underlying philosophy behind the White Roads Project is to create positive approach to road safety and focus on zero fatality roads, as opposed to the traditional practice of focusing on black spots. In total, 982 EU WhiteSpots have been identified representing 40% over the total TEN-T road network and after analysing 85,418 Kms of roads and 248,158 accidents in the EU. The main challenge was the collection and analysis of data and statistics from 27 member states.

NTUA Professor George Yannis presented “Improving data & statistics in road safety: EU perspective”.  

According to ELSTAT data, during the last decade, road fatalities in Greece have decreased by 38%, whereas serious injuries decreased by 59%. The rate fatalities per number of vehicles has decreased the same period by 60%. This rate is still high in comparison to the other EU countries, explained also by the the high increase of the vehicle fleet in Greece during the same period (58%). The significant increase in Police enforcement was found correlated to the road fatalities decrease. 

Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) of the European Commission released the Statistical Pocketbook 2011 ‘EU Transport in figures‘. In this Statistical Pocketbook, key road safety Tables are contained, together with several other Tables on transport statistics, providing a complete picture of current trends in transport in Europe. Data on road fatalities for the EU member states and associate countries allowed for time series comparisons and country rankings. 

In June 2011, ETSC published the PIN Annual Report. During the period 2001-2010 a decrease of road fatalities of 43% was observed in the 27 EU countries, whereas the respective reduction in Greece was 37%.  For the first time, Greece is ranked 27th, with 123 persons killed per million population (EU average 62).  The European target of 50% road fatalities reduction in comparison to 2001 was achieved by eight countries.  

A Diploma Thesis titled ‘Development of macroscopic models for the severity of road accidents with one or more vehicles’  was presented by Smaragda Kritikou in March 2011. The application of the four of log-rate models revealed the impact of various factors on the accident severity (type of region, intersection, weather and lighting condition, vehicle type, age and collision type). Single-vehicle accidents were found 2.4 times more serious than accidents with two or more vehicles and the severity of accidents for the pedestrians was found 1.2 times higher than that for the drivers and 1.4 than that for the passengers.

In June 2010, ETSC published the results of the Annual PIN Report. As many as 34,900 people lost their lives in road collisions in 2009, this is still far more than the maximum of 27,000 which the EU set for 2010. Yet it is 19,500 fewer than in 2001 showing great progress has been made across the EU. Since 2001, road deaths have been cut by 36% in the EU27. Comparison of developments up to 2009 show that Latvia, Spain, Portugal and Estonia achieved the best reductions. Greece was ranked last before the last according to the ETSC report. 

The International Transport Forum (ITF) on the 19th of May, published a record low in road deaths. For the first time ever the number of people killed in road accidents has fallen below 150,000 in the 52 member countries of the International Transport Forum (ITF), excluding India.   

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

The 4th IRTAD Conference took place in Seoul and brought together more than 100 road safety experts from around the world to discuss the use of safety data for setting targets and monitor road safety performance and to encourage knowledge transfer for data collection and analyses.

NTUA presentations concerned:

  CADaS – A common road accident data framework in Europe

  Road safety and the elderly in Europe

  Analyses using the European Road Safety Observatory

The first SafetyNet Conference and Workshop on European accident data and road and vehicle safety policy, organised by Loughborough University took place in Prague in May 2006. The purpose of the conference is to examine the ways in which data driven road and vehicle safety policies are formed and identify the new challenges that will come with new technologies and post-2010 casualty reduction targets. 

NTUA presented:

 State-of-the-art on risk exposure data

 CARE Accident Data

An ad-hoc Meeting on Traffic Performance was organised by UNECE and the Danish Delegation and took place in Copenhagen in December 2005.

NTUA presented ‘Developing a common framework for the collection of risk exposure data in Europe within the SafetyNet IP The European Road Safety Observatory’