On June 5, 2025, the SDG Local Action series explored how connected vehicles can improve road safety, offering insights for cities aiming to create safer and more livable urban environments. The session highlighted presentations from two unique perspectives: one from the private sector, represented by Mercedes-Benz, and one from the public sector, represented by the City of Rotterdam, Netherlands. Together, these cases illustrate how public-private partnerships can transform data from connected vehicles into actionable intelligence to save lives.
The video recording can be watched on our YouTube channel – in English, Spanish, and French.
Context and challenges: how connected vehicles can make cities safer?
Globally, nearly 1.2 million people die in road collisions every year. Despite growing investments in Vision Zero initiatives, progress remains uneven. Connected vehicles offer a new way to address this challenge. They generate vast amounts of information through sensors that monitor everything from sudden braking to road surface conditions. Equipped with hundreds of sensors and generating real-time data, they can:
- Detect and report near-miss incidents.
- Identify road danger hotspots before crashes occur.
- Complement traditional infrastructure with digital intelligence.
However, while this data holds tremendous potential, many local governments remain unsure how to effectively access and apply it. Bridging the gap between vehicle manufacturers and public authorities has become a critical step in transforming raw data into actionable policy decisions.
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz highlighted how the company’s connected vehicles are generating massive volumes of high-quality sensor data. With more than 14 million connected vehicles operating across over 50 countries.
During the webinar, Mercedes-Benz presented a case study of the company’s work with Transport for London and other European cities. Mercedes-Benz focuses on using anonymized data streams to support public safety, including:
- Up to 350 sensors per vehicle, monitoring braking, steering, and near-miss situations.
- Real-time data sharing (with driver consent), fully automatized and aggregated.
- Surface temperature readings for weather and road condition assessments.
- Road safety dashboards identifying dynamic risk hotspots.
- Micro-weather information collected directly from vehicles.
Some applications of these collected data are:
- Heatmaps reveal areas where pedestrians, cyclists or vehicles frequently trigger emergency braking.
- Risk scores and trend analysis enable cities to target interventions (e.g infrastructure amendments, speed reductions).
- Anonymized vehicle data helps cities reduce the need for costly sensor infrastructure by providing real-time road condition data directly from the vehicles.
- Public-private collaborative pilots enable cross-city comparisons, revealing common risk patterns and informing preventive interventions.
Ultimately, Mercedes-Benz envisions that standardized, high-frequency vehicle data can serve as a foundation for better urban planning, allowing cities to detect dangerous situations earlier and act proactively.
“This is not future tech – it is already on the road”, emphasized Mercedes-Benz.
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
The City of Rotterdam shared insights on how it is leveraging connected vehicle data to enhance public safety and mobility management. Rotterdam has identified multiple areas where vehicle data can directly support public policies, including:
- Road safety (e.g., identifying accident hot spots).
- Traffic management (e.g., monitoring road closures, optimizing routes).
- Parking regulation improvement.
- Feedback on public space management (e.g., traffic signs maintenance, detecting littering).
- Environmental monitoring (e.g., measuring surface temperature, detecting fires).
To realize these benefits, Rotterdam emphasizes starting from policy goals, defining functional data needs, and carefully evaluating whether to collect, buy, or exchange data. In parallel, the city has invested in its own internal data governance structures, including platforms such as the Rotterdam Open Urban Platform and participation in international initiatives like the XCarCity Digital Twin Federation. The City of Rotterdam also shared how the city leverages partnerships with the BMW group.
In addition, Rotterdam shared its guiding principles:
- Policy-first approach: focus on clear public outcomes – not technology for its own sake.
- Collaboration: long-term partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), governed by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
- Standards and scalability: integration with Rotterdam’s national data access points, ensuring interoperability and future scaling.
- Privacy by design: data privacy and governance and non-negotiable, with robust legal frameworks in place.
These principles allowed Rotterdam to respond faster to emerging safety issues and optimize the design of public-private interventions, while also preparing for future upscaling through national and EU-wide data exchange platforms.
Key lessons learned
- Start with clear policy goals: define specific outcomes (e.g. reducing pedestrian injuries) before selecting data or tools.
- Prioritize interoperability: standardized data formats across OEMs are essential to avoid fragmented insights.
- Combine multiple data sources: private and public data – when integrated – provide a richer, more actionable picture of urban mobility
- Manage expectations: data should inform decision making, not replace human judgement or holistic urban design.
- Invest in public-private trust: successful partnerships require mutual understanding and respect for each other’s constraints and goals.
- Design infrastructure for safety first: urban design changes (e.g. speed reductions, lane redesign) remain a foundational component to connected vehicle data.