EU: Ford SYNC to get "Emergency Assistance" service
19 May 2011
Emergency Assistance is a new feature developed as part of the SYNC system for Europe that will automatically inform the emergency services in the event of an accident.
Emergency Assistance is able to accurately determine the location of the vehicle using a combination of the onboard GPS unit, map database and information from the customer's mobile phone before making a call to emergency services.
The system ensures that emergency services are contacted with an introductory message communicating to the operator that a crash has occured at a precise location in the correct language for the region.
The service operates as part of SYNC. It becomes active when a mobile phone is paired with the system using the Standard Bluetooth integration, enabling the Emergency Assistance feature to be offered by Ford without the subscription required by systems from some competitors.
Emergency Assistance is the only system that calls the emergency operator directly with key information about the incident including GPS location, rather than losing precious time by first directing the call through a third party call centre.
The Emergency Assistance feature is able to directly communicate with emergency services in double the number of European countries than any other emergency call service, as well as several countries outside of the EU.
The feature eliminates concerns drivers may have not being able to call for assistance in the event of an accident because of language limitations or not knowing the emergency number for the area that they are in.
Ford has developed an industry first system that communicates to the operator in the local language, while continuing to speak with the occupant in their preferred language.
To ensure the system would work throughout European call centres, the system has been designed to pass along all critical information to the operator audibly.
During the development of the Emergency Assistance feature Ford worked with the European Emergency Number Association, gaining valuable input into the system design.
The EENA aims to ensure a consistently high level of response to 112 emergency number calls across Europe.