Greece

The core problem is that children in Greece grow up with little or no mobility education. There is no structured cultivation of what it means to be a responsible, aware participant in shared road environments. Most students have never experienced what it means to move safely, to share space, or to recognize the needs of vulnerable users (such as people with disabilities, pedestrians, or cyclists).
Our initiative targets children aged 0–16 and promotes safe and sustainable mobility through education in schools in the Municipality of Chania, Crete. We do not approach road safety simply as accident prevention — we view it as a cultural issue: How do we perceive movement in public space? How do we respect pedestrians, cyclists, and especially children?
Our programme fills this gap by offering an immersive, experience-based approach through Virtual Reality (VR) technology — placing children in realistic traffic situations where they learn by living the experience, not just reading about it.
The goal is not just to “prevent harm.” It is to help them move through the world with awareness, respect, and a sense of belonging in a community that moves together.

Road crashes is a major societal problem worldwide, especially in cities where pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are highly exposed and vulnerable in case of a collision. The new policy of city-wide 30 km/h speed limit is intended to ensure vulnerable road users’ safety accounting for 70% of deaths in road crashes in urban areas in Europe.

Scientists urge continuously for lower speeds; however, speeding remains a model and sought behaviour among most drivers and riders, especially the young. The voices of vulnerable road users for less speeding remain weak towards our long-established car and speed-centred societies.

The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) launched the innovative and original 30 Marathons in 30 months campaign (www.georgeruns30x30.com), aimed at promoting city-wide 30 km/h speed limit in all cities worldwide, as a key policy for safer, healthier and greener cities for all. The NTUA campaign was implemented by the internationally renowned NTUA Professor George Yannis, who is ranked 2nd in Europe and 9th worldwide in road safety science, and supported by the NTUA Road Safety Observatory (https://www.nrso.ntua.gr), a Centre of Research and Innovation Excellence on road safety with global recognition.

This impactful campaign represents a major shift towards a more human-centred approach to urban planning, where people are at the heart of design decisions.

As an insurance company we know that the safer our roads are, the fewer accidents we will have. We also know that children are the best audience in order to ensure that bad road usage habits will change in the years to come.

Road safety is a major issue in the EU, taking into consideration Vision Zero and all the proposals towards reducing fatalities and serious injuries. At the same time, the crosswalks outside schools all around Greece are faded or even invisible. While we talk to the children about safety, we have no means to safeguard their most regular trip, to and from their school, and lack the practical prompt to show them how they can walk safely in the urban environment.

At Hella Direct we care, beyond insurance, about safety, and acknowledge that both infrastructure and road safety education do not rise up to current needs and expectations, we decided to act.

Thus we launched the Safe Roads project. With our expert crew, we go wherever we are needed all around Greece. Always in cooperation with the municipalities and schools, we paint faded crossings. That's how we're changing insurance for good.

The main challenge is the reduction of road accidents as a function of driving behavior. In recent years, significant progress has been made and the rate of accidents has decreased, but further improvement is needed in drivers behavior and at the same time in the infrastructure which is already extremely improved. For this reason, we created the safe cycling training program to train future drivers: the children, in order to become responsible drivers in the future

As the statistics show, Greece has the highest ratio of motorcyclists per active population. The training for riding in public roads offered is not sufficient and the driving license examinations do not guarantee the adequacy of knowledge, skills and road behavior as shown by the number of accidents. A post-education process is lacking in millions of amateur A license riders and this becomes more urgent as the need for further training for those who use motorcycles as a work vehicle (delivery drivers) has arisen. Government agencies have special refresher courses for their employees but millions of motorcyclists ride without any additional training beyond the basic training they attended before obtaining their driving license.

The main issues our practice addresses are the following:
1. Proper body position on the motorcycle
2. Proper method of braking
3. Proper eye focus while riding
4. Proper motorcycle riding behaviour (other road users)
5. Developing confidence and overcoming fears when on the motorcycle