The province of North Brabant and insurer Interpolis will work together to improve road safety. Interpolis shares anonymized damage data with the province for this purpose. The data shows exactly where many accidents happen in Brabant. This is information that road authorities have often missed until now. It is the first time in the Netherlands that an insurer and a province are working together to make traffic safer.
Accidents often remain out of the picture
Every year, thousands of minor accidents happen in Brabant that never end up in official figures. This concerns collisions in parking lots or accidents involving cyclists or mopeds. Because the damage is usually limited and no emergency services are called in, these incidents do not end up in the police or municipal records.
Insurers do have that information. Interpolis is therefore now sharing its fully anonymized claims data with the province for the first time. This concerns almost 60,000 accidents from the past four years. An initial analysis shows that thousands of these were not yet known to the government.
First in the Netherlands
It is the first time in the Netherlands that an insurer and a province are working together in this way. “Our goal is to actively use our knowledge and data together with the province to improve road safety,” says Interpolis CEO Uco Vegter. “Our role goes further than paying out damages. By showing where accidents happen, we help make Brabant safer.”
Deputy Stijn Smeulders, responsible for mobility, also calls the collaboration an important step. “Every accident on our Brabant roads is one too many. The data from Interpolis helps us and the municipalities to make very targeted improvements, even at street level. This way we can really work on a data-driven province towards a safer province.”
Idea from practice
The collaboration started at Interpolis itself. Data consultant Twan Jansen wondered what happened to all the completed damage locations in the insurer’s system. His idea grew into a project in which damage information is linked to government data.
To protect privacy, the data is completely anonymous and cannot be traced back to individuals. The province combines the data with other sources, such as traffic intensity and reports from emergency services. Based on this, municipalities can decide where adjustments are necessary, for example at dangerous intersections or bicycle crossings.
If the project proves successful, Interpolis and the province would like to expand the approach nationwide. “Hopefully more insurers will join in, so that together we can get an even more complete picture of where things go wrong on the road,” says Vegter.