No role for smartphones in Europe’s eCall
11 Nov 2011
Although one of the hottest issues currently discussed in the automotive infotainment, Smartphones won't play a roll in Europe's eCall initiative. The Europe-wide emergency calling system will be mandatory in cars from 2015 onwards. Although implementation is slowed by differences of opinion on technologies, interoperability, call redirection and so on, there is one thing all players agree about. The system needs to always work, which means in-vehicle integration.
Although systems which rely on mobile phones in emergency situations are excellent, they are not really crash-resistant, according to European Commission executive, Pierpaolo Tona. The Bluetooth connection that connects the phone to the car, for example, could be severed in a crash situation.
"In many cases, mobile phones would not have been able to provide full service beause of a crash," he said, citing data collected by the French carmaker, Peugeot. "When there's a crash, mobile phones are generally expelled from the docking station and even from the car itself," he added.
Under the already approved eCall legislation, all new cars would have an embedded mobile communications device that automatically (or manually) places a call in the case of a serious accident using the 112 single European emergency number. An automatic transmission of key data on vehicle location, number of passengers and the state of the car wold be included. Pilot projects are currently running in nine EU member countries through the end of 2013.
While EU Informant Commissioner Neelie Kroes said, that she is committed to the 2015 deadline, auto industry executives consider the timetable for the eCall implementation as too ambitious. Estimating that automatic car crash notification can save up to 2,500 lives a year, eCall should help to reduce emergency services' response times to accidents.
The EU puts overall economic losses resulting from road accidents at more than 130 billion a year. It expects that Ecall can help save up to 38 billion euros in road-accident-related costs.