The European Commission proposes making eCall mandatory in 2015

The European Commission has proposed that from the year 2015 all vehicles must include the eCall as standard. The idea is that in the event of an accident, this system can be activated in emergency situations through the sensors (usually the same ones used to deploy the airbag) and will automatically initiate an emergency call to 112. At the same time, a minimum data set about the incident will be sent to the 112 Centre operator, including the position (GNSS, GPS and, in the future, Galileo coordinates), the vehicle’s direction, the time of the accident, the fuel type and the vehicle type.

The proposal has received fairly wide support from other Commission departments, covering safety and industry. In terms of safety, the gain in the speed with which authorities and emergency services reach the crashed vehicle would allow more lives to be saved. On the other hand, the cost of eCall in each vehicle would be no more than 100 euros per car.

In the event of an accident, time becomes a fundamental factor in ensuring that the occupants of a vehicle receive proper assistance and can even have their lives saved. eCall could reduce emergency teams’ response time by 40% in urban areas and by up to 50% in rural areas, which would greatly contribute to saving some 2,500 lives a year in Europe, according to European Commission Vice-President and Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas.

For now, only a very small percentage of vehicles have eCall, either voluntarily or fitted as standard equipment by some manufacturers. Manufacturers are precisely asking for a little more time to install the eCall system widely, as they say they need an average of 36 months to implement technical adaptations, a timeframe the Commission has not met.

Source | El Mundo

Photo | BMW