Gah!
"The Greens also felt that a system promoting accident rescue is the wrong approach and the emphasis should be on safer driving."
Yes, because once I have this, I will make more of an effort to slam my car into a tree at 90 mph.
Idiots.
Your new car will dob you in to the cops if you crash, decrees EU
New cars sold in the EU from March 2018 will have to phone the authorities if they think they've been in a crash. A watered-down version of the eCall proposal has found favour with the EU Commission, meaning when a car or light van crashes, it will automatically summon the emergency services. It will use the emergency number …
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Gah!
If the Volvo drivers of times gone by are anything to go by, they'd make more effort to drive into a passing motorcyclist. The idea being that when you feel safer you become more complacent. And it would probably be fair to say that, actually, it's not an effort, it's unconscious (and thus requires training to overcome).
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:12 GMT TRT
Re: Gah!
Eventually they'll link the acceleration sensor of mobile phones to some sort of biometric sensor in, say, a watch, so that if a pedestrian or cyclist gets hit, the phone they were holding in their hand as they tried to cross the southbound slip road of junction 6 of the M62 will fall to the floor, trigger the sensor, and in conjunction with the fading pulse, a call will be placed to the ambulance service. Or the Coop.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Gah!
I doubt that in reality people will even remember they've got this system and so I doubt that it'll ad to their sense of security. Airbags and crash structures do, in my opinion but not this.
I also note that the article claims this comes from the "EU Commission" but then later we read that it came from a group of MEPs. The latter seems to be correct if other web sites are to be believed.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 10:25 GMT MJI
Re: Spikes
No just no, I would like to live thank you, as would the driver who smashed into me.
I still get flash backs of the car infront of me swerving into oncoming traffic (suspect broken wheel), the the car they hit head on spun put of control smashing into me.
So 3 deaths would be a good idea then?
More safety the better, I called 999 for Ambulance and Police, the other two cars were twisted pile of metal and I drove home with a slightly bent but beyond economic repair car (£2500 to repair to a decent standard)
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 11:30 GMT John 98
Front brakes are dangerous!
Or so the "experts" used to say in the twenties - they would only encourage reckless driving. Every safety improvement on cars draws a lunatic response. Furthermore, why shouldn't cars have a black box - aren't the rest of us entitled to know whether a potentially lethal piece of kit was being operated safely in a public space?
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 12:23 GMT Dr. Mouse
Re: Gah!
So we should make car seats out of razor blades. Also just say there is an airbag when there is not for 1 in a 100.
You'd drive safe just in case it was yours ;)
This reminds me of a sign I saw once. "This site is protected by shotgun security one day a week. You guess which one!"
will fall to the floor, trigger the sensor, and in conjunction with the fading pulse, a call will be placed to the ambulance service.
There are already apps for this. Realrider, designed for motorcyclists, has this:
Key sensors in your Smartphone look for changes such as rapid deceleration, tumbling motion followed by a period of non-movement. If your REALRIDER® app detects a crash, an alert is triggered.
If you’re OK, you can deactivate the alert to prevent your information from being sent to the NHS. If the alert is untouched, the phone will send your location, medical details and mobile phone number to the Ambulance Control Room.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 10:18 GMT Dammit
Re: Gah!
You might make less of an effort to avoid slamming into a tree at 90mph if you believe yourself to be safer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
The safest car is one driven by someone who is REALLY trying to avoid having a crash, no seatbelt, no ABS, nice hard surfaces to cannon into that would make sure lots of bones are broken - basically a 1950's American car - would arguably be safer than todays modern vehicles in terms of getting people to pay attention.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 12:29 GMT 142
Re: Gah!
The greens probably have a point.
100 per new car is a phenomenal amount of money. Well over 10,000,000,000. Annually.
It would lead to one hell of a road safety campaign, and given the cut in death toll many of these have caused in the past, it's not hard to think it may well exceed the impact these devices will have.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 12:58 GMT Wilco
Re: Gah!
Fair point that this may not be the best way to save lives (actually not sure it would save any, except in fairly rare cases), but 10 billion is out by an order of magnitude
See:
http://www.best-selling-cars.com/international/2014-full-year-international-worldwide-car-sales/
Total cars sales in EU and EFTA = 13 million, so the cost for all new cars would be 1.3 billion
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 08:44 GMT Cynical Observer
Sound bites bite back
“Quicker response from the emergency services to accidents on roads across Europe could save about 2,500 lives in the EU every year. The severity of injuries will also be considerably reduced in tens of thousands of cases.”
How will the system determine that emergency services are actually required? Or is it a case in the political heads that airbag deployment automatically equals serious enough to call the services.?
As for the "Severity of injuries" .... can someone with a command of logic please step up to the podium and explain that one.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 08:50 GMT DaLo
Re: Sound bites bite back
If the airbag is deployed then it will be reasonable to expect the car will not be going anywhere under it's own steam again so if it is on the road the Police would be needed for traffic flow/recovery etc, if it's off the road then the accident is likely to be more critical.
Also any activation of the airbag should have an ambulance assessment for C-Spine injuries as the forces involved will definitely point to that mechanic of injury.
If you are sure you don't want the emergency services there then you can always call them yourself straight away and tell them there is no problem. It would be likely that the reason for this would be an intoxicated driver so the Police might just turn up anyway.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 08:53 GMT Electron Shepherd
Re: Sound bites bite back
The lady making the comment is Czech, so I imagine there's a bit of "lost in translation" there. I think she means that the impact of any severe injuries will be less. If I have an accident and am bleeding badly, my prognosis is much better if help can arrive more quickly.
But yes, airbag deployment doesn't automatically mean that you need medical attention. Having said that, it's hard to imagine an accident severe enough to cause the airbags to deploy where the authorities in some respect would not be involved. Even if you drive into a tree all on your own and are unhurt due to the airbags etc, you've still damaged the tree, which is someone else's property, so the owner of the damaged property has a claim against you.
I can see this being used to inform the authorities about severe accidents, even if the accident doesn't require someone to show up with blues and twos.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 08:54 GMT DaLo
Re: Sound bites bite back
"Severity of injuries"
You may well injure yourself but some times the severity of it depends on quick access to medical professionals and equipment. A cut may not be severe but if it leads to a large blood loss then it becomes severe. A broken bone may not be severe but if it obstructs your blood flow for a long time then it is.
Rapid medical assessment, treatment and extraction often reduces the severity or even the fatality of an injury.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 08:56 GMT TRT
Re: Sound bites bite back
I certainly think that the last 20 seconds of speed data should be transmitted along with the other information, and also the record of the "bums on seats" sensors and/or safety belts-buckled sensors.
Then there's also the issue of multiple-vehicle incidents. Will the system perform some sort of cluster analysis and determine that there's a two/three/four car incident at the same location, rather than load-balance the dispatch and route two ambulances from different stations to the same two car incident?
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 23:41 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Sound bites bite back
"I certainly think that the last 20 seconds of speed data should be transmitted along with the other information, and also the record of the "bums on seats" sensors and/or safety belts-buckled sensors."
This is why it's taken so long to get to this point and why the "bare minimum" of data has been agreed should be sent. It's to minimise any future feature creep. If, as you suggest, the data you list is sent because it might be useful, then even more data would be even more useful. Maybe it should have a built in GPS tracker and it could send the last 2 minutes of location data too? Or maybe the last hour, just in case you might have visited a pub. See where it leads when you want more?
As some ancient Chinese gentleman once said, "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it"
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 12:14 GMT Anonymous Custard
Re: How many new cars don't have airbags in Europe?
I must admit I'm struggling to think of any make/model of brand new car today which doesn't have at least a drivers air bag of some sort as standard.
Can anybody shed light on such a vehicle on-sale in Europe today? Apparently they're only recommended in Europe (link) but are mandatory in the USA
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:07 GMT Neil Barnes
Remind me how this works
In countries[1] which don't have 100% mobile network coverage? Presumably, the worse the coverage, the further from centres of population and the more important that help be called, yet the less likely that the call can be made.
I'm also suspicious of any analysis which states 'x lives will be saved if...' - are there really so many accidents throughout the EU which happen without witnesses, most of whom are likely to be carrying phones anyway?
[1] e.g. the UK.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:11 GMT Lee D
Re: Remind me how this works
No worse than whatever happened previously.
If you can't get a cellphone signal, you can't phone for help yourself either.
Likely the in-car thing will actually have a better aerial than your phone, though.
And there isn't much land nowadays that can't get GPRS at minimum.
If anything, surely this is a boost to GET that 100% coverage that everyone wants?
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 10:56 GMT Dave 126
Re: Remind me how this works
All GSM compliant phones will use any available network to place an emergency call - not just your network. The phone doesn't even need a SIM, either.
Most people at some point will have seen the 'Emegency Calls Only' message on their phone where the name of the network operator normally resides.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 18:34 GMT Neil Barnes
Re: Remind me how this works
@1980s - I have. And bits of the Middle east have (had) a similar issue. Fun, isn't it?
@Just Enough - my point is not that it doesn't work, but that it's redundant. If there is sufficient population that there is a working phone network, I would argue that there are likely to be witnesses (possibly also the participants) who are very likely to have phones of their own. I was asking if there are really two and a half thousand fatal accidents per year throughout Europe where there *is* coverage but no witnesses per year.
Though having seen some of the accident compilations from the old Eastern Block countries on YouTube (and witnessed some of the driving standards) it does seem possible.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:13 GMT Afernie
"We ensured that the vehicles equipped with 112 public eCall are not traceable and are not subject to constant tracking."
Uh huh.
"In fact, the device will upgrade the data constantly and keep the minimum information required to handle the emergency calls."
With my not-so-tinfoil hat on, I think this last bit should be more like: "In fact the device will have whatever half-assed security we decide to throw into it, and by the time the NSA and GCHQ (or even just a bored script kiddie) have finished with it it will be thoroughly pwned and they can then use it to track you, and should they be so inclined, modify the data and/or 'test' the functionality."
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well if implemented as specified then the system won't have a physical transmission feature until the sensors are deployed therefore emote hacking should not be possible (assuming the sensors couldn't be overridden by the CAN bus via bluetooth). It would not stop someone physically interfering with the device to allow tracking by the spooks would just install their own tracker in that case anyway.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 11:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well if implemented as specified then the system won't have a physical transmission feature until the sensors are deployed
Which means it'll take precious time waking up, scanning for networks, decide which one it likes and (if it's SIM equipped) then also try to log in before it can transmit. Judging by how long my phone takes to go live when I land in another country, that does not fill me with confidence.
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Wednesday 29th April 2015 09:15 GMT P. Lee
Anyone else wonder...
why the *EU* is trying to mandate this?
Is it a free-trade issue? Required for international cooperation? Are some countries put at a disadvantage due to the imbalance of car sim devices?
Whether or not its a good idea, I don't know why the EU is involved. It looks to me like self-important meddling in the affairs of nation-states. What number are they going to dial? Who exactly are they going to report to? Along with the sim device, will they need a GPS? If you're on the Belgian side of the border but nearer a French hospital, who's going to help? I see feature creep in the future.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
