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back to article Europe's prang-phone-in-every-car to cost €5m per life saved

Members of the European Parliament are backing calls for a mandatory eCall scheme, forcing every car sold in Europe to be fitted with an embedded mobile communications device to save an estimated 2,500 lives. The European Commission has already adopted eCall, which mandates the fitting of a mobile device in every private car …

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bystanders?

      "and then you hope they actually see you"

      ...and don't pretend they haven't (a few perhaps out of malice, but usually it's fear / shock).

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Airbag deployment is a false comparison

    Airbags must be deployed in fractions of a second if they're to do their job, the logic which decides to call the authorities has a lot more time to assess the situation. A cancel button is just one of the inputs that could be used to decide whether the call should be made. Even if a call were to be made it would be easy to provide e.g. pictures of the situation that could be checked before emergency services rolled.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    (cynical) correction

    Quote:

    being able to track people in the moments before an accident means cheaper premiums (for safer drivers)

    Correction: being able to track people in the moments before an accident means dearer premiums (for unsafe drivers)

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  4. despairing citizen
    Stop

    Nice idea - shame about the details

    This is one of those ideas that is good in threory, but fails in the real world.

    1. Assumes the comms survives the crash

    2. Assumes the cell net works in the area you're in (try getting a mobile reception in rurual river valley)

    3. Assumes the system can get a GPS signal (big buildings in cities, tunnels, etc,)

    4. People will assume the auto call went out, and hence not call it in themselves

    5. Defects and Faults causing false-positives, or not calling when they should

    Yes it could in theory save a life, I can think of two examples where it would have, but personally I think the above down sides would actually create a net negative, be having ambulances responding to wrong locations, and people relying on system that has ceased to function.

    so 10 out 10 for a good idea, minus a few hundred for practicalities

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  5. Fafhrd
    Facepalm

    motorcross mayhem!

    "and extending the technology into (hitherto exempt) motorcycles and trucks too."

    Hey great - police and ambulance arrive every time I stuff my dirt bike through a hedge - hilarious!

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  6. Bernd Felsche
    Facepalm

    Unintended consequences

    + bystanders will no longer call for emergencies assuming that the crashed car has already called

    + provides an attack vector against emergency services as connections are inherently untrusted

    + GPRS (minimum) connectivity to connect to 112 call centres to post the XML object isn't ubiquitous

    + each vehicle will require a "slot" in a mobile cell and be constantly connected for rapid response

    + if the vehicle isn't constantly connected, it can take minutes to establish a connection

    + "constant" connection facilitates vehicle tracking

    + powering an electrical (radio transmission) device in a crashed vehicle can add to fire risk

    Some of those things can add to the road toll.

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  7. sunjun5

    "One might even argue that bystanders will be less willing to place the call (and perhaps lend other support) when they know the vehicle will have summoned aid already – but perhaps we're being too cynical."

    Perhaps you are not. In 'Thinking Fast and Slow', Daniel Kahneman writes about an experiment by Richard Nisbett (p 171). He concludes that "individuals feel relieved of responsibility when they know that others have heard the same request for help".

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  8. Adalat

    My main concern is the emergency services and call centre time wasted on false positives. Bearing in mind that all the call centre knows is "something happened", and then have to figure out what, where, whether anyone was injured, match this call with bystander calls that might or might not be about the same accident, and whether to divert an ambulance that happens to be a block away on another job. Cost to install the hardware is only the start. By the way will tow truck drivers be notified?

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many can be saved

    Fewer than 2,000 died in road accidents last year in the UK. I imagine most had pretty fast responses from the emergency services even without the proposed device.

    I wonder what proportion would be saved by the system - I doubt there's much room for improvement here.

    William

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