The European Commission has proposed a law that would make it mandatory from October, 2015, for all new passenger cars and light vehicles to be able to call the emergency services automatically, in the event of an incident.
The method of operation would be done through a system known as “eCall”, which would require investment in receiver equipment in all member state countries, but, according to the vice president of the European Commission responsible for transport, Siim Kallas, “has the potential to save up to 2,500 lives a year and help us achieve our goal of halving the number of road deaths in the EU in 2020”.
The cost per vehicle would be around 100 euro, and “will make an automatic call in case of accident, even if the driver is unconscious”. The system will also be able to notify emergency teams of the location, type of vehicle, and the impact direction, something “especially important” when the accident occurs on highways or tunnels.
This information will allow accurate and automatic emergency teams to send an ambulance to the scene much faster than they can do now. Specifically, the system could reduce intervention time of emergency crews 40% in the case of urban areas and up to 50% in rural areas, assuming that there are still ambulances left, having survived the government´s cuts, by the year 2015
“When an accident occurs, every minute counts. If emergency services are informed immediately and know exactly where the accident occurred, preventable death is increased, argued Kallas, who recalled that studies show that 50% of road accident deaths occur in minutes, 30% in several hours and 20% during the days and weeks following the accident.
Kallas also stressed that the eCall will contribute to traffic congestion when there is an accident by allowing faster intervention to “clean up” the area and thus also “reduce the risk of secondary accidents” after an initial collision.
Last year 28,000 people lost their lives on European roads and another 1.5 million were injured in a total of 1.1 million registered accidents, according to the Community Executive.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/39395/
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