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The Background

With shared micromobility services firmly embedded in Helsinki’s transport ecosystem, the City of Helsinki and Forum Virium Helsinki sought new methods to proactively manage the safety of e-scooter riders. Rather than waiting for crashes to occur, the Safety Sense project explored how connected mobility data could help predict and prevent high-risk situations.

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The project formed part of the larger EU-funded ELABORATOR programme, bringing together partners with complementary expertise: See.Sense (vehicle-integrated sensors), Dott and Tier (shared mobility operators), Vianova (data analytics platform), and Forum Virium Helsinki.

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The Challenge

Traditional road safety analysis in Helsinki has relied on incident reports and post-crash data. However, this reactive approach misses the opportunity to identify "near-miss" behavior and unsafe conditions before injuries occur. E-scooter users in particular face risks due to unclear infrastructure, mixed traffic environments, and enforcement gaps.

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• 🕵️ Reveal hidden safety risks across the network.
  

• 📊 Support before/after assessments of infrastructure changes.
  

• 🛴 Inform better design of parking zones, slow-speed areas, and junctions.

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The Solution

40 Dott e-scooters in Helsinki were equipped with See.Sense SUMMIT2 sensors, which continuously captured braking, swerving, and road surface events.

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Over 2,490 trips were recorded, covering 4,512 km and saving an estimated 677 kg of CO2.

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• 🔐 Aggregated and anonymized to ensure privacy compliance.
  

• 🗺️ Mapped against Helsinki's road and cycling infrastructure.
  

• 🧹 Filtered to remove irrelevant or GPS-skewed data (e.g. scooters in vans).
  

• 🧩 Enriched with overlays like slow-speed zones and dangerous intersections.
  
  

Vianova developed a new "risk ratio" metric, comparing the rate of unusual events (e.g. hard braking) to overall trip volume. This allowed identification of disproportionately risky locations, even in areas with fewer trips.

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The Results

The project produced a powerful combination of route popularity maps, event-based hotspot visualizations, and before/after infrastructure comparisons.

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Examples of insights:

• Old Church Park: Fewer incidents were recorded along the north corridor with dedicated lanes, while the south shared path showed high swerving and braking — validating the local perception of poor safety
  
  
• Helsinki Central Station: Repeated braking/swerving events at Mikonkatu and Simonsgatan were linked to pedestrian-tram conflicts, previously highlighted in academic studies
  
  
• Kallio Library Area: Congested streets with summer activations and high foot traffic showed spikes in swerving and braking, suggesting a need for design adjustments.
  
  

The risk ratio analysis also uncovered new high-risk corridors that hadn’t been flagged by traditional crash data — giving the city a valuable early warning system.

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Looking Ahead

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The results were presented at Helsinki’s final Safety Sense webinar and international expos, generating strong interest from city planners and e-scooter stakeholders. With support from iRAP, the data is also being evaluated for use in CycleRAP, a global tool for assessing cycling infrastructure safety.

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By demonstrating how low-cost sensors and cloud-based analytics can provide actionable safety insights, this pilot paves the way for more proactive, data-informed safety planning — in Helsinki and across other European cities.

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Vianova and its partners are now exploring how to scale the model to other cities, additional vehicle types, and year-round monitoring strategies.

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About Vianova

Vianova is the data analytics solution to operate the mobility world. Our platform harnesses the power of connected vehicles and IoT data, to provide actionable insights to plan for safer, greener, and more efficient transportation infrastructures.

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From enabling regulation of shared mobility to transforming last-mile deliveries, and mapping road risk hotspots, Vianova serves 150+ cities, fleet operators, and enterprises across the globe to change the way people and goods move.

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Ready to learn more?  Visit our page to get in touch.

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