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Road safety remains a major public health priority, and influencing driver behaviour is essential until safer systems can fully eliminate risk. Advances in behaviour change science now allow road safety interventions to be guided by robust evidence rather than intuition. A study published in Wellcome Open Research highlights how innovative data frameworks could transform the way road safety interventions are evaluated.

Speeding is a leading cause of traffic collisions worldwide, yet research into effective interventions is fragmented by inconsistent terminology and reporting. This makes it difficult to compare approaches such as driver training, speed cameras, or public education campaigns.

To address this, BR-UK researchers from TRL and the Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and University College London, tested the use of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO), a structured framework that standardises how interventions are described, on reports of speeding interventions. The team developed and piloted a new data schema to annotate trial reports, allowing key details about interventions, populations, and outcomes to be captured in a consistent, machine-readable way.

By applying ontologies to road safety research, the aim is to reduce waste, make findings more comparable, and ultimately identify which strategies are most effective for saving lives. The work builds on successful applications of the BCIO in areas such as smoking cessation and physical activity. It represents a step toward more scalable, AI-powered evidence synthesis across behavioural science.

In short, this study tested the use of an ontology-based schema to annotate trials of speeding interventions, demonstrating its potential to identify effective strategies and support more systematic evidence synthesis. Future work will expand this approach by developing ontology classes specific to driving behaviour—starting with speeding—and applying the schema to a larger body of studies, ultimately helping to build predictive tools for road safety policy and practice.

The article is freely available and open for peer review, at Wellcome Open Research: Use of an ontology-based framework for ... | Wellcome Open Research