The European Commission today took the first step in a process which will see all new cars fitted with a system which 'calls' emergency services automatically in the event of a major accident, as from 2015.
eCall, as the system is called, will automatically dial Europe's single emergency number 112 in the event of a serious accident and communicate the vehicle's location to the emergency services.
A Commission Recommendation adopted today, urges Member States to ensure that mobile phone network operators upgrade their infrastructure so that eCalls are efficiently passed on to emergency services.
"Every minute is crucial to save lives and reduce the severity of injuries when emergency services are called to a road accident. Yet people injured in an accident do not always have the reflex or the physical ability to call emergency services immediately. eCall devices address this problem by alerting emergency services immediately even if the driver or passenger is unconscious or otherwise unable to call," the Commission said.
"The technology speeds up the arrival of emergency teams by an estimated 40% in urban areas and 50% in rural areas. Once widely deployed, eCall will save several hundred lives in Europe every year, and reduce the severity of injuries and trauma in tens of thousands of cases."
The Commission's aim is for a fully functional eCall service to be in place all over the European Union (as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) by 2015.
The recommendation urges every Member State to ensure that mobile operators treat calls from eCall devices like other 112 calls – i.e. give priority to them and do not charge for them. The recommendation also indicates that Member States should ensure that mobile operators put in place systems to identify eCalls so that they can be routed to an emergency service call centre equipped to handle them.
Ther ecommendation is due to be followed by the adoption by the Commission of specifications for the upgrade of emergency call response centres and a proposal for a Regulation to require eCall devices meeting the required technical specifications to be fitted to all new models of passenger cars from 2015 in order to obtain EU-wide type approval.
eCall will be activated automatically as soon as in-vehicle sensors detect a serious crash. Once set off, the system dials 112, establishes a telephone link to the appropriate emergency call centre and sends details of the accident to the rescue services, including the time of incident, the accurate position of the crashed vehicle and the direction of travel (most important on motorways and in tunnels). An eCall can also be triggered manually by pushing a button in the car, for example by a witness to a serious accident.
The eCall system is estimated to cost less than €100 per new car to install. To rule out privacy concerns, the eCall system does not allow the tracking of vehicles because it 'sleeps' and does not send any signals until it is activated by a crash.
Currently, only 0.7 % of all passenger vehicles in the EU are equipped with automatic emergency call systems.