SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research

SWOV is the national scientific institute for road safety research in the Netherlands. Since 1962 its mission has been to use knowledge from scientific research to make road traffic safer. SWOV developed Sustainable Safety, the Dutch vision that road traffic should be designed so that human errors do not lead to serious crashes.

SWOV is a non-profit organisation of about fifty people that works across disciplines, within its own walls and with institutes in the Netherlands and abroad.

SWOV joined NEON because the energy transition changes the road. Strategic choices about the sustainability and electrification of mobility can have a deep impact on road safety. The knowledge about future mobility from NEON was meant to help SWOV define its own research on that future.

In return, SWOV made sure that safety stayed in the picture. When NEON modelled pathways to sustainable mobility, it was important to take road safety into account as well, and SWOV was asked to carry out a safety check so that road safety impacts would not be neglected. It contributed feedback and advice from its knowledge of road safety to the work packages on smart mobility hubs and mobility as a service, and on the safety envelope of automated vehicles.