Data-driven improvement of road safety by safer road users and safer roads

Initiative details

Road authorities are increasingly looking for effective road safety measures driven by data in order to succeed in the Vision Zero strategy which has been published by authorities in the national ‘Strategic plan road safety 2030’.

Driving behaviour data provides an important indicator of risk of accidents and road safety. This kind of data is very helpful to analyse how drivers behave and interact with the road infrastructure. For example: where does extreme driver behaviour occur frequently? For example frequent harsh braking on a specific road section can be the consequence of the road infrastructure. Driving behaviour data supports monitoring in an effective way. It enables authorities to check how road safety measures by improving infrastructure are affected driving behaviour.

Initiative date

to

Who was/is your target audience?

Public authorities
Car drivers
Cyclists

Topic

Create awareness
Improve vehicles and infrastructure

Organisation details

ANWB
Association
Netherlands
The Hague

Contact name

Menno Mimpen

Telephone number

+31631760374

Website

Project activities

If you work together with external partners, list the most important partners and briefly describe their role.

Municipality of Rotterdam: User of the anonymous driver behaviour data, and initiated an Artificial Intelligence model to calculate accident risk in a detailed manner at the level of road sections and road crossings. Their development included the provision of a user interface showing the risk of traffic accidents on a detailed road map.

Please describe the project activities you carried/are carrying out and the time period over which these were implemented.

In 2016 we started our ‘ANWB Safe Drive car insurance’ to coach and improve driver behaviour. The data we collected directly from the car or from the sensors of the driver’s mobile phone is used to provide feedback to a driver on his driving behaviour. Detailed feedback and coaching information is provided every 10 days through our mobile app which belongs to this car insurance. Safe driving is rewarded by a discount on the insurance premium, which for sure encourages safe driving behaviour. From the start it has been the goal to use the collected data to improve road safety in general as well. Having this vision from the start resulted in being prepared for the next stage.

After a pilot with road authorities in 2020, a formal data-service was implemented at ANWB early 2021. In March 2021 the car insurance data was provided officially to the first road authority to enable data driven improvement of road safety by assessing the road infrastructure. At the moment driving behaviour data is available continuously from about 75.000 cars in The Netherlands, resulting in about 18 million data events in 2021. Data is historically available from mid-2016. Next to data about driving speed, data is available about harsh braking and harsh cornering, including the precise location, date and time of the event. By including this driving behaviour data into road safety models it was proven to be a strong predictor for traffic accidents.

Evaluation

What has been the effect of the activities?

Early 2021 Rotterdam was the first road authority who started to use driver behaviour data to explore and to review their road infrastructure based on data including driver behaviour data. This data was proven to be a strong determining factor within the road safety model to forecast accident risk.
By the end of 2021 more than 80 road authorities had access to ANWB’s anonymised driver behaviour data. Currently (May 2022) more than 150 road authorities in The Netherlands have access to the data. The data which is provided by ANWB as a non-commercial service!

Please briefly explain why your initiative is a good example of improving road safety.

Implementation barriers included overcoming GPDR restrictions and close cooperation within a in a public private partnership. For the first time car insurance data, providing insights into driving behaviour, is being used to pro-actively improve road safety of the road infrastructure.

How have you shared information about your project and its results?

Our knowledge sharing is mostly done during meetings with road authorities, which includes municipalities, provinces and the highway authority.

In October 2021 we published an article in the ANWB magazine ‘Kampioen’ (see attached document), one of the largest magazines in The Netherlands with a volume of 3.5 million copies.

In April 2022 we presented results at the NVVC congress (The National Road Safety Congress in The Netherlands) together with City of Rotterdam.

We will present the results at the FERSI international congress in October 202. Finally we just started to connect to motoring clubs like ANWB in other countries to cooperate and share knowledge on this topic.