A new mobile standard has just been passed which will lead to most European cars having a mobile phone built into them which will automatically report accidents.
The move is part of a European Commission attempt to make roads safer and the idea focuses on fast response to potentially fatal accidents, though the system will work at lots of different levels and is built around something called eCall which has been in place for a while.
eCall and its new public road safety initiative are standards from both the European Telecommunication Standards Institute and 3GPP, and means that a single Europe wide phone number of 112 is adopted in all countries for emergencies, where you can speak to an operator in any language.
The eCall public road safety initiative is supposed to provide rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere in the European Union by automatically generating an emergency voice call via the cellular network to local emergency agencies, as well as sending crucial information such as location data. eCall is scheduled for introduction across Europe in late 2010, with the aim of saving lives by improving notification of road accidents and speeding up emergency service response.
In-car systems were going to use the SMS protocol, but it was found that these messages can be substantially delayed so instead a new type of in-band modem was devised, which will generate just 140 bytes of data as a minimum amount of information the emergency services will need, which will be delivered in under 4 seconds, and acknowledged with a return signal. This type of system means there need be no modifications to existing cellular networks.
This is the latest step on an effort dating back about 6 years to get this off the ground in the standardization of eCall in an in-band modem, so there is one single way that calls can be made across all phones. An in-band modem is a system that allows data to be sent across the mobile network on existing voice lines even if they are being used for voice.
An eCall can be made by a person but where Europe is going on this is to automatically have cars call in themselves through the use of in-vehicle sensors, which respond when an accident occurs. The in-vehicle eCall directly establishes a 112-voice connection with the relevant Public Service Answering Point (PSAP), and sends crucial information such as time and location of the accident, and a description of the vehicle involved. The information sent to the PSAP can optionally include a lot more detail but this will depend upon subscribing to specialist emergency services which keep data on file about vehicle occupants.
All new vehicles should eventually be equipped with the eCall system, starting from 2010 in an attempt to cut down on the 40,000 people who die every year on Europe’s roads. Qualcomm is one of the company’s that has been behind the initiative because it operates similar services in other countries and reckons that this has the potential to save 2.500 lives and €26 billion each year in the EU alone.
More and more onboard ‘Intelligent vehicle systems’ will emerge as 2010 approaches on the back of this initiative which will help drivers avoid traffic, report accidents, provide the most efficient routes for any journey and optimise engine performance, and lowering carbon emissions.