SHARING IS CARING: Data’s role in the road safety ecosystem

As unwieldy Summit session titles go, ‘Unlocking the European Data Chapter for Road Safety: Building Europe’s Safety Data Ecosystem’ is going to be hard to beat at Intertraffic Amsterdam 2026 (and one could justifiably question whether or not a chapter can indeed be unlocked), but even the briefest of glances at the panellists would tell you that the old adage of ‘never judge a book by its cover’ is very seldom untrue.

Moderated expertly by ERTICO’s CEO Joost Vantomme, the esteemed speakers lined up like a veritable who’s who of the European auto safety sector: Ford Werke’s Peter Geffers; HERE Technologies’ Christian Kleiner; Erik Vrijens of the Rijswaterstaat and EuroNCAP’s Richard Schram. Where else would you find a line-up of that quality at the same event, let alone together on the same stage. The reason they were all together? Data For Road Safety (DFRS and chaired by Vantomme), the initiative that brings clarity to the safety-related traffic information ecosystem.

The audience, still largely recovering from the incredible aural assault from the drum trio, learned how vehicle OEMs, traffic information service providers and public authorities are working together to create road safety-related events and exchange high-quality safety data at scale - and what it takes in practice to make this collaboration work. In one word the answer is interoperability.

The focus of the session was on the eight evens that constitute mandatory data sharing: unprotected accident area; animal, people, obstacles, debris on the road; temporary slippery road; reduced visibility; exceptional weather conditions; short-term road works; wrong-way drivers and unmanaged blockage of a road, with the emphasis on a cooperative approach to road sharing.

Peter Geffers insisted that the objective is to design a road safety ecosystem in which everyone survives, which is quite a difficult ambition to argue against, while Richard Schram insisted that safety warnings need to be, ultimately, timely and reliable to serve their purpose. Christian Kleiner’s perspective was to not underestimate the importance of location data and Vrijen’s view from the Ministry was that the ability to use vehicle data for multiple safety-related purposes was paramount in day-to-day road operations.

It’s arguable that anyone entered Summit Theatre 1 underestimating the importance of accurate, timely data in the application of road safety measures, but if there were it’s incredibly unlikely that they didn’t have their minds entirely changed by the time the allotted 45 minutes had elapsed.