How private is your data?

As more and more data is collected from vehicles, the industry must be increasingly vigilant about how it is used and shared.

Today’s vehicles are data-collecting machines. Every journey generates information about your movements, driving patterns and speeds, which vehicle manufacturers and navigation providers already harvest in aggregated and anonymous form. Driving data promises to deliver manifold benefits both to road users and society, from smarter route advice to improved road safety, and be a key enabler of automated driving.

But without independent oversight, who can guarantee that manufacturers will not retain privacy-sensitive customer information? When your car records your behaviour, who does that record belong to? Who should decide how to use or profit from it? As vehicles become more connected, the volume and sensitivity of data will only increase and its appeal in spheres like enforcement and insurance pricing will grow more persuasive.

“Who can access your data, its value, how it can be monetised and how individuals can be recompensed are all questions worth asking,” says Dave Marples, chief scientist at Dutch ITS provider and consultancy Technolution. “If anonymised data is used tactically for a current transit episode and strategically to inform adjustments to infrastructure, there is good utility and payback to the individual.”

By contrast, Marples considers using the same data to drive premium food-pricing in service areas less straightforwardly positive. Such applications are familiar from the internet, where your browsing data is routinely monetised to sell targeted advertising. Over time, this has been seen to erode trust and drive platform decay, whereby vendors degrade customer offerings to better serve business partners – pitfalls carmakers could do well to avoid.

Undesirable uses of data
Marples starkly observes that most legally-obtained data is admissible in court – for instance, he imagines a scenario where your car struck a pedestrian who stepped into the road without looking. “If the prosecution can access your driving data and demonstrate you habitually speeding down that road, it doesn’t matter what happened on the day in question,” he says. “A pattern is established.”

In many countries, new drivers can only access affordable insurance by having a ‘black box’ fitted to monitor their driving. Since we know that speed kills, who could object to using connected vehicle data to link insurance pricing to driving behaviour for everyone? Certainly, this could save lives by ensuring universal compliance with speed limits, preventing even the most experienced driver from cutting loose occasionally on an empty highway at night.

“That may be good from a compliance perspective, but who defines the measure of ‘good’?” Marples asks. “We may ask, Do I want to manufacture the bullets used to shoot me? A shadow modem could easily be included in a car to collect data about who you are, where you go and at what speeds. There are no technical obstacles to doing that today, only financial and legislative constraints.”

Data, he says, has no intrinsic character, only different applications. It can be used to improve vehicle performance, make roads safer or increase user convenience. Equally, it can enable personal profiling, enforce politically acceptable behaviour or target lethal drone strikes. Whether the data we generate today is used for good or ill may depend on the governance we choose for tomorrow.

Maintaining transparency
Research conducted by automobile associations like the Royal Dutch Touring Club (ANWB) underlines the importance of privacy to drivers. “Collecting movement data requires a trusted party and full transparency about which data is being collected, and why,” says ANWB director of public affairs, Ferry Smith. “It helps if there is also a user benefit, such as reduced premiums for safe drivers.”

According to Smith, who is also a member of the Advisory Group for the UN Special Envoy for Road Safety, navigation providers and vehicle manufacturers already collect and analyse travel and driving-style data from individuals. “While parties can claim these are aggregated datasets that cannot be traced to individuals, there is no oversight and we now know car manufacturers do have access to privacy-sensitive customer information.”

For Marples, the only reliable mechanisms for restricting data exploitation are to avoid generating data at all, or to have strict rules religiously applied. He believes the latter approach has proven ineffective, not least because lawmakers are often incentivised to apply rules flexibly. “We should give the EU some credit for reigning in data exploitation,” he adds. “GDPR and other mechanisms have gone some way towards protecting people.”

Nevertheless, he believes correctly-marshalled access to data can deliver numerous benefits in training AI, swiftly disseminating traffic information and extracting ‘human’ knowledge of local environments. But these benefits are constrained when data is guarded in siloes by individual OEMs and not made available to other parties in the transport value-chain.

“Perhaps as individuals, that’s the deal we should push for,” says Marples. “Yes, you can use my data - but it should be openly shared with everyone. That would at least prioritise responsible anonymisation and mean when I move between providers, I still benefit from my historic contributions.”

This vision is starting to become reality through European initiatives like Data for Road Safety (DFRS), which has established a non-commercial ecosystem for sharing anonymised safety data. The consortium requires participating OEMs to both contribute and utilise data from all other participants, ensuring no manufacturer can create proprietary advantage from collectively-generated safety information.

With Euro NCAP now recognising vehicles that contribute to DFRS within its safety-rating system from January 2026, momentum is building rapidly across the industry, for more on this see https://www.intertraffic.com/news/road-safety/connected-vehicle-safety

The risks of AI
Marples believes the terms under which data is collected today are often ad hoc, malleable and self-serving. “We’re only anonymous by virtue of poor indexing, but AI gives us free indexing,” he adds. “We don’t want a situation where an AI can identify a particular vehicle’s location at a specific time.”

He believes individuals need informed control over their data. While nobody realistically reads or understands all those terms and conditions, this is no excuse for malpractice. Marples believes far better outreach and communication to end-users must underwrite understanding and trust in how their data is used.

“It’s important to clarify the value of user-generated data and value added by processing,” says Smith. “Only then can we ensure various parties involved in a final commercial product are properly rewarded.”

In answer to Smith’s concerns, the DFRS model demonstrates how government-backed initiatives with clear objectives can overcome these challenges. By operating as a non-commercial partnership between public authorities, OEMs and service providers, DFRS has created a framework where data sharing serves the public good rather than individual commercial interests. The consortium’s technical group focuses on ensuring data from different sources can be harmonised and made actionable for safety purposes.

BMW, Ford, Mercedes, VW and Volvo are signed up to DFRS, but other OEMs are not and it is, in any case, a scheme only operating in Europe. Therefore, much of the way data is handled around the world is still lacking governance and pushing into uncharted territory, where success will depend on continuously assessing how far benefits outweigh drawbacks and when intervention is necessary. One certainty is that the onward march of data towards whatever brave new worlds it may deliver will not be slowing down soon.

“Most technical challenges have been overcome, allowing for collection of far more data than users would be comfortable with if fully aware of its breadth,” says Marples. “Advances in mobile communication will enable realtime, even predictive data collection to support autonomous decision-making. There is enormous technical opportunity ahead, but we must not forget that we are here to serve people.”

Connecting VRUs
While connected vehicle data sharing has made significant strides in Europe, extending similar approaches to vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as cyclists and pedestrians presents both challenges and opportunities.

“Cyclists and pedestrians are also part of a coherent system,” says Ferry Smith, member of the Advisory Group for the UN Special Envoy for Road Safety. “Standardised protocols will be needed to prevent data collection differing between vehicles, manufacturers or navigation providers, which could lead to undesirable revenue models. We need a co-ordinating entity which oversees development at a system level and maintains contact between parties.”

The technical challenges of gathering data from vulnerable road users are being tackled through innovative approaches. Dublin-based Luna Systems has developed AI-powered camera technology that provides cyclists with real-time alerts about approaching vehicles while simultaneously collecting anonymised data about dangerous overtaking, blind spots and infrastructure deficiencies. “We see massive correlation between insufficient infrastructure and safety,” says Maria Diviney, Luna’s cofounder.

“Our apps will enable cyclists to share this data with other users, similar to how Strava works, but also an opt-in function for cyclists to share their anonymised data with us so it can be shared with cities to support their efforts to identify incident blackspots.”

Luna’s technology, showcased at CES 2024 in partnership with Qualcomm, exemplifies how camera-based computer vision can create Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS) for two-wheelers at affordable price points. The company has partnered with Segway-Ninebot to deploy its safety technology across shared micromobility platforms and is developing consumer products including the Luna Oculus rear-facing camera system.

Similar data-driven approaches are emerging across Europe. The MegaBITS project,, has deployed over 30 pilot applications across Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, demonstrating how ITS can enhance cycling safety through smart traffic lights, parking sensors and collision warnings.

As cities work toward Vision Zero targets, incorporating data from vulnerable road users into broader traffic management systems remains essential for creating truly comprehensive road safety solutions. Within urban areas, pedestrians, cyclists and users of e-bikes represent almost 70% of total fatalities – making their inclusion in connected safety ecosystems not just beneficial but imperative.

[Data sharing] may be good from a compliance perspective, but who defines the measure of ‘good’?... Do I want to manufacture the bullets used to shoot me? Dave Marples, chief scientist, Technolution

We’re only anonymous by virtue of poor indexing, but AI gives us free indexing. We don’t want a situation where an AI can identify a particular vehicle’s location at a specific time Ferry Smith, member of the Advisory Group for the UN Special Envoy for Road Safety

Our apps enable cyclists to share this data with other users… they can also opt-in to share anonymised data with cities to support efforts in identifying incident blackspots Maria Diviney, co-founder, Luna