Making our roads safer through skills-based volunteering

OUR DATA SCIENTISTS, ACTUARIES AND ANALYSTS IDENTIFIED THE MOST DANGEROUS HOTSPOTS NATIONALLY TO HELP TARGET ROAD SAFETY SOLUTIONS TO THE MOST HIGH PRIORITY AREAS

With 2.7 million customers across the country and over $1.4 billion paid out in car accident claims in 2018, Aviva Canada has a wealth of collision data that we can use for good.

We know Canadian roads are still too dangerous. Fatal collisions increased by 2% from 2015 to 2016, and preventable injuries from incidents including car accidents are the number one cause of death for Canadians under the age of 44.

What if we used our data to shape how problems are defined and addressed?

We’d have a huge opportunity to tackle road safety in a fresh, data-driven way. With some of the best and brightest minds in insurance working under our roof, this is exactly what we had in mind when developing our Road Safety Challenge to support Aviva Take Back our Roads, our social impact platform, aimed at making Canadian roads and school zones safer.

Team AvivaGives x data for good.

So, how could we use our people, data and resources to address a pressing social need, while working towards reducing death and injury on our roads?

We rallied a group of 40 Aviva data scientists, actuaries and analysts. We then challenged them to use their three paid company volunteer days this year to help us identify the most dangerous intersections and school zones across the country; the ones that need urgent attention because of the frequency and severity of collisions. Through our social impact platform, we want to disrupt the road safety space by introducing data-driven, on-the-ground solutions and innovations in communities that need it most.

The challenge rundown.

Our people took on our Road Safety Challenge and geo-located some of the most dangerous hotspots nationally, using Aviva’s collision claims data and open data provided by local government and police services. With their findings, we’re now targeting our road safety investments in 2019 and beyond to address the highest priority areas and school zones in communities to make the most impact possible making safer roads a reality.

So what’s next?

We plan to keep challenging our people to care more for our customers and communities by using their expertise and our data to help make our roads safer for everyone.

“The Aviva Data Science team is excited to be able to utilize our vast internal resources and technical capabilities to help solve a growing problem in communities across Canada. By pairing our proprietary insurance claims data with the growing repository of collision open data available across Canada, we will be working with one of the most complete collision datasets available in Canada. Applying the latest machine learning techniques to this dataset will allow Aviva to bring measurable change to road safety in communities across Canada.” - Ryan Haydon, Data Ecosystems Lead, Aviva Canada