Death and serious injury numbers on UK roads are about as low as they’ve ever been, while Volvo says no one will be killed or seriously injured in its new cars by 2020, so it’s easy to think that road safety is reaching its zenith.
The industry wouldn’t be ploughing the resources it is into curbing accidents if there wasn’t any work left to do, though, and one of the issues bubbling under the surface for around a decade now is the ability to immediately and accurately locate a vehicle and its passengers when a serious accident happens.
Mobile phones are all well and good, but they don’t provide as accurate a location via an emergency services trace as most of us would like to think (see news p3 for more), nor are they much good if you’re in a reception black spot or if an accident victim is unconscious.
The eCall initiative was launched in 2004 by the European Commission, and aims to have all new cars sold in the EU fitted with a device that automatically contacts the emergency services when an accident happens. The technology is nothing new – you can find SOS buttons that do largely the same thing on a lot of modern cars – but they’re not standard fit or automated and they usually dial into a manufacturer’s call centre before the legitimate calls are passed on to the emergency services.
If eCall becomes mandatory, which is currently due to happen in October 2015, it will work as a completely automatic system, will telephone the emergency services directly, and will be a universal function in every car.
Volvo’s OnCall product manager, Michael L Sena, explains how it works: “There are three ways in which you can [get the vehicle to] make a call after a crash. One is if you have a crash sensor in your car and a Bluetooth connection to the phone. Two is taking the driver’s life in your hands with motion sensors [on the phone], so if a car crashes and the phone goes flying through the window, the phone call goes out, if you’re lucky, before the phone is destroyed. Three is a device connected to the crash sensors in the car that automatically calls the emergency services – this is eCall. We do it already, but it goes through to our call centre, who intermediate. They’re usually calls that require something else, rather than emergency service call centres.”
Implementing the technology isn’t as straightforward as all that, though. According to Sena, the 2015 date is optimistic at best: “The legislation, when and if it’s passed, would be that all new type-approved cars would have to have this installed. They were [initially] talking about January 2015, but that’s unlikely because the car manufacturers have said they need three years [to implement it] after it becomes mandatory.” He adds that, in 2006, the European Commission “came up with a design that did not meet the requirements of car companies”, and was subsequently rejected.
The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), a big advocate of eCall and the representative of the car makers involved, doesn’t hold out much hope for the roll-out of the technology next year either. The organisation’s secretary general, Ivan Hodac, says: “Everyone and everything has to be in place for it to work.
“The automobile industry is very concerned that the proposed October 2015 entry into force does not respect the 36-month lead time that the industry will need to implement the technical adaptations.
“Also, considering the member states’ requirement for working infrastructure to be in place, the time needed for legislative procedure and the need to assess the technical and legal challenges, this target date is highly ambitious.”
The ACEA adds that three things need to be “ready simultaneously” if eCall is to work: “The devices need to be fitted to cars and vans; the equipment to receive and process the call – the public service answering points – must be ready in all member states; and the mobile network coverage needs to be in place.”
The idea of a permanently connected car poses its own set of Big Brother-style conundrums around whether drivers are comfortable with a car’s ability to target their whereabouts. Sena claims there is no issue with this though, as the system would only activate in the event of a crash: “No services are connected other than safety,” he says. “The phone call is separate [to any other communication].”
The EU is pressing for a universal eCall system to become mandatory as soon as possible, and the most recent development came last month when the European Parliament approved moves for “the deployment of the necessary infrastructure” to get the ball rolling. If it works, it can’t be a bad thing, but the current state of affairs means it could take longer than expected to see the technology in every new vehicle.
