EU plans emergency 'eCall' technology for all new vehicles

The EU is planning to implement an 'eCall' technology on all new vehicles by 2009. The technology could save 2,000 lives per year by sending an 'SOS' signal that would automatically activate upon impact or be manually activated by a person in the vehicle.

EU Business
The transmitter would be activated automatically by pressure sensors that would detect a sudden impact, or manually by an injured occupant of the car, and send an SOS via the EU-wide emergency call number 112.

The emergency services, through specially adapted call centres, would receive the signal and immediately locate the car by satellite to dispatch an ambulance crew.

"With this technology, your car could save your life," EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said.

The commission unveiled its plan after contacts with EU governments and the auto industry which it said showed that the eCall technology could be fitted in all new cars "as soon as 2009".

The devices would be embedded in the car's electronics with only a button visible on the dashboard, Brussels said.

This does sound like a good idea, I just hope the device is within range to send a signal when it is needed and is built well enough to continue operating after a crash.

[edit on 3-2-2005 by AceOfBase]

This sounds exactly like Onstar which you can get on all GM vehicles I believe. I dont think it is required though and is a option you have to pay for but you do get a Insurance Discount.


www.onstar.com... sp

I wonder how much this tech and the service it will require will increase the price of those cars.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
This sounds exactly like Onstar which you can get on all GM vehicles I believe.

That's what I thought of when I read about the eCall technology but I wasn't sure if it activated automatically. The website you linked to says it does.

I think it should be on all vehicles, it makes sense.

Yeah if it can save lives it should be one all vehicles. The thing I like about 'Onstar' not sure if its on 'Ecall' is that a live operator can be on the line to comfort you, tell you help is on the way ect..

It can be used for more mundane things like helping you with direction if you are lost or if some old lady gets a flat in the middle of no where she can call for help to get someone out there. Also it can be used to track car thieves

[edit on 3-2-2005 by ShadowXIX]

This black box proposal for cars is not what it says it is. The fact is it will have capabilities to turn your car into a taxi, basically creating a way for toll roads everywhere, tracking and tracing everywhere you go. If I ever get a car with "Onstar," installed I will rip out that Orwellian piece of garbage.

In America, we are SO lucky to have consumer safety advocates. They have managed to convince our administration to mandate black boxes in every new vehicle manufactured in the US: www.usatoday.com...

I discovered that many carmakers are already doing this (after I bought my new vehicle that unfortunately has a black box). I suspect they want to include black boxes to preclude plaintiffs' lawyers from saying that the vehicle was faulty, since the carmaker can read the black box and use the defense of: the dude was going 120mph with no seatbelt and no braking at the time of the accident. Kind of short-circuits a lawsuit about faulty vehicle design contributing to an injury.

To make matters worse, the damn black box is irrevocably tied into many of the vehicle's electronic systems, like the air bag, and removing it will render the vehicle unusable. If not, my black box would have been drowned in the creek behind my house months ago.

Run very quickly away from the OnStar system. It monitors your driving behavior and will dial out if it thinks you're driving poorly: motortrend.com...

Plus, the FBI can reverse the OnStar telephone and listen in without you ever knowing. news.com.com... A court just said it was illegal, but only because you had paid for the emergency service that the government had to disable while listening, but if they fixed that bug it would all be kosher. By now, I'm sure they've solved that little issue.

Ahh, and the car rental companies are beginning to slap extra fees on you if the GPS and black box in the rental car shows you speeding. www.drivers.com... I sleep better at night knowing they are looking out for our well-being.

Sorry for the rant. Black boxes in cars "for our safety" is one of my pet peeves/paranoias.

Well thats a scary dark side to this tech This somewhat reminds me of the thing some cops wanted to put into cars that would be a remote kill switch for your car. So if you were trying to run from them they could just kill your engine.

Possum Sandwich are you certain you cant remove this even if you knew what you were doing with car electronics. I mean if you brought it to a to a shop they still couldnt do anything about it?

Ive been looking into these black boxes or event data recorders (EDR) Its already started to be used in ways it was never intended. I have found atleast two cases in Canada were they have been used to prosecute people in court for dangerous driving. One case was in Monteral the other Alberta.

The defense tried to argue using the EDR was a violation of the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms. But the Judge disagreed.

Ive been looking into ways to remove a EDR but it might be illegal and will deactivate the cars airbag, so your safety would be compromised.

My understanding of disabling the black box, known by the polite designation of "EDR" (Electronic Data Recorder), is that many of the required functions of the vehicle are routed through it. It's designed to sense speed, brake position, throttle position, RPM, airbag status, seatbelt use, wheel orientation, and others. Apparently, those signals are routed through it, rather than it serving as an external sensor that can be unplugged.

Deactivating it would entail cutting a bunch of wires, that could...perhaps...be routed to the correct places without the central computer of the vehicle sensing that there was an essential component missing. I'm not being facetious about the "central computer", either, since most vehicles have chips that control the engine and sense air intake, fuel injection, and then theoretically optimize performance. While I distrust The Man, I am content with performing a visual inspection under and around my vehicle every day or two to verify nothing has been added. If I get in a wreck or do something that would initiate them reading my black box, then I'll trash it. Right now, it's simply recording my trips to Wal-Merde. If I ever do find GPS bug on my car, my first plan will be to spell out a large "FU" on the map using side streets and let the feds download THAT. Then, out come the wire cutters and thermite.

I have no idea why people are against this technology. Driving is a privalidge not a right folks, its not in the Constitution you know, and already there are too many maniac drivers on the road right now that I will gladly give up some privacy on the road, if I drive which I do not heh. I know I may seem stubborn but I refuse to drive anything that pollutes. Wasn't there something like 40,000 people killed on American Highways last year? Thats alot of people not coming home The moment they require every home to have a black box, then I will be up in arms but Cars, gimme a break.

Originally posted by Possum Sandwich

Deactivating it would entail cutting a bunch of wires, that could...perhaps...be routed to the correct places without the central computer of the vehicle sensing that there was an essential component missing. I'm not being facetious about the "central computer", either, since most vehicles have chips that control the engine and sense air intake, fuel injection, and then theoretically optimize performance.

It seems most of these only record about 5-8 seconds of data before a crash.

Heres a interesting quote I found though

''Installing black boxes with five seconds worth of memory was as simple as adding a memory chip to existing computer systems in cars. Increasing the memory to several months' worth of data would not be difficult at all, Mr. Stanley says. "If GM decided tomorrow to track three months of data instead of five seconds, there's nothing that would make them have to tell anybody," he adds. ''

I wonder why they would ever need that long of data though??


But anyway I was thinking about only tampering with the memory chip so that it would record the data as normal from all its sensors but would not be able to save it.

You think that could work?

www.usatoday.com... -27-auto-blackbox_x.htm?csp=15

Originally posted by sardion2000
I have no idea why people are against this technology. Driving is a privalidge not a right folks, its not in the Constitution you know, and already there are too many maniac drivers on the road right now .

- Yeah, too right.

My bet is attitudes would take a marked 180' turn as folks grow up a little and it eventually dawns that it is the realistic prospect of it being their own child(ren) killed, maimed or generally deeply traumatised whilst selfish idiots go about exercising their 'freedom' to go nuts in their car in a built up area.

Frankly the day a 'goveror' (the kind which can be told as you enter an area what the speed limit is in that town or residential area) is a mandatory built-in feature in cars is the day I celebrate.
I can see no valid reason why any prvate car should be able to exceed the speed limit in towns/residential areas.

This is nothing to do with 'freedom'.
It just isn't worth the cost in lives either terminated or permanently wrecked.

Many of you are familiar with the parable about placing a frog in boiling water. (No animals were harmed in the making of this post, which was supervised by the SPCA--and the FBI, no doubt.) For the novices: supposedly, if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will leap out right away to escape the danger. But, if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with water that is cool and pleasant, and then you gradually heat the kettle until it starts boiling, the frog will not become aware of the threat until it's too late and he's done for it.

We would have rebelled if all that had been imposed on us had been attempted at once. But, because these chains were forged imperceptibly, link by link, we submit. The adding of any single, new link to the chain is never enough for us to make a big fuss about. It always seems easier, and safer, to go with flow. And the further we go, the easier it is to go just one step further.

First, it's adding a computer to the car. Nobody's got an issue with that, even me. And hey, since your car's already got a computer, let's give it a memory chip to make it work better. Wow, that memory could be used to give us data to make future cars safer if we analyze it after crashes. See, now you've got better airbags and anti-lock brakes!

Damn! That hadji who just blew himself and half of a city block to Allah had a computer in his car, so doesn't it make sense that we should access it? Cool. Look at all that good info we got! And that drunk who plowed into the family, well we can use his data recorder to make sure he never bothers us again.

You'll never get lost again in a rental car, either, with the handy-dandy GPS nav system. And that little button you push to call help when you're in trouble, it knows your location even if you don't! Sir, kind sir, if you'll mount this tiny thing on your dash for a few weeks, and we see what a good driver you are, you'll get a huge discount on your car insurance.

Golly, gee, these must be good things! And they are, if you are the only one using them. But that ain't true. Law enforcement can mount a GPS tracker on your car WITHOUT A WARRANT. Since they can tail you without a warrant, this is just using technology to save manpower and revenue, according to American courts. If you are pulled over, there is absolutely no law to prevent the police from pulling the data out of your car's black box and introducing it into your criminal trial. Got into a wreck and the other dude sues you for whiplash? Opposing counsel can request the data in discovery, and you get to turn it over to be used against you. Already have OnStar? The cops, or the IRS, or any technologically-savvy and pissed-off civilian, can reverse your Onstar system to listen to your conversations.

So where does this leave us? It leaves me with a wiring schematic of my vehicle and a pair of wirecutters.