Granular driving and intersection data helps drive traffic safety investments
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The Missouri Department of Transportation is turning to telematics data to identify high-risk intersections that officials hope will bolster their efforts to deploy solutions that can improve roadway safety.
For the first time since 2021, Missouri has seen the number of traffic-related fatalities decline from 955 deaths in 2024 to 910 in 2025, which also marked the first year since 2019 that the state saw a sustained 3-year decrease in traffic deaths. Reducing traffic accidents and fatalities remains a top priority for Missouri officials, and advanced tech and data capabilities are helping them do that.
“We manage about 34,000 miles of roads in our state, and they come in all shapes and sizes,” said Jonathan Nelson, state highway safety and traffic engineer at Missouri Department of Transportation. “There’s certainly an element of risk that occurs on our roadways every single day, and a lot of it comes down to [people] driving too fast, driving distracted, driving under the influence or driving while they’re fatigued.”
To mitigate those risks, state transportation departments like MODOT must invest in solutions like safety campaigns, policy and enforcement or infrastructure changes, like rumble strips or guardrails, Nelson said. But such commitments are hard to gain buy-in for when agencies essentially have to wait for traffic crashes to occur and wait even longer for that data to be recorded.
That’s where localized telematics data helps accelerate traffic safety improvements. MODOT is leveraging a platform from Cambridge Mobile Telematics that now includes capabilities to monitor intersection-level traffic behavior, Nelson said.
The data, which includes hard braking, phone use and speeding, is collected through drivers’ mobile devices that are registered in safe driving programs and integrates with state and federal crash and fatality records for broader data analysis, said Ryan McMahon, vice president of strategy and corporate development at CMT.
Telematics data, in particular, “is beneficial and promising because it's very much more proactive,” Nelson said. “It's not telling us where the crashes have occurred. It’s telling us where the risk factors that are associated with these crashes are occurring on the roadways already.”
The CMT platform can then identify and rank a community’s intersections based on risky driving behavior collected there to help agencies prioritize their traffic safety efforts, particularly as many transportation departments lack the staff and financial resources to manually inspect and research pain points on their roadways, McMahon explained.
Indeed, MODOT staff can leverage the platform’s street view capabilities to virtually evaluate an intersection for risk factors, such as overgrown vegetation that blocks a driver’s view of incoming vehicles, Nelson said. That yields significant time savings because staff can begin implementing solutions before having to travel to the intersection or without needing to do so at all.
The data also enables MODOT to better collaborate with other agencies, such as local police departments, to deploy officers in high-risk areas where more stringent enforcement of traffic laws may be needed, he said.
In Ohio, for instance, driver behavior data showed that in 2025 the state had a lower rate of phone use while driving compared with national rates after lawmakers enacted a 2023 law that prohibits people from using their mobile devices while operating a vehicle.
Over the next couple of years, MODOT will continue to leverage the telematics data platform to identify “low-hanging fruit” solutions for risky intersections and driving behaviors, which Nelson said will help transportation agencies “build [their] resume” for increased funding to continue supporting such efforts.
“There is a piece of the puzzle that [telematics] data plays in helping agencies ensure that they're … being good stewards of the investment that's been entrusted to us, and that's going to just serve us well in the future,” he said.