The eCall signing and demonstration ceremony was attended by the European Commission’s Digital Agenda Commissioner, Neelie Kroes.
The idea of fitting vehicles with an automatic emergency-number dialing system is catching on fast in Europe, with 20 European countries now having undertaken to implement the system. Only France, the UK, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia and Poland have yet to opt in to the project.
eCall is a European Commission initiative designed to bring rapid aid to car drivers involved in a traffic accident anywhere in the European Union. Under this project vehicles are fitted with a device whose sensors (similar to airbag sensors) automatically call 112 in the event of an accident. At the same time a minimum set of incident data is sent to the 112 emergency-center operator; this information includes position (GNSS-GPS coordinates and Galileo in the future), vehicle direction, time of accident, type of vehicle, etc.
The eCall system has already received the endorsement of European mobile telephony operators and carmakers; this backing is a sine qua non of its large-scale implementation.
It is estimated that eCall could save 2500 lives a year in Europe when fitted to all vehicles and also reduce the severity of injuries in 10-15% of car accidents, thanks to the quicker response time of the emergency services.
Since 1994 GMV has been providing Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) as solutions geared towards improving operational efficiency and increasing service quality. GMV develops bespoke applications to meet the sector’s needs, integrating satellite navigation, mobile communications, passenger-information and control and monitoring centers. It is now number one in Spain in GPS systems for the management of urban passenger and railway transport and is also exporting these systems far afield in Europe and Asia.