Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-27-Speech-4-012"
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"en.20060427.2.4-012"2
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".
Madam President, I want you to imagine a scene: it is a dark and stormy night, it is cold, wet and windy, and you are driving along unfamiliar roads – possibly even lost – when, all of a sudden, something is in your way. You are forced to swerve and you hit a tree, knocking yourself unconscious. At that point, a relatively minor accident could become very serious: you could be in shock, you could develop hypothermia, you could have bleeding which if not stemmed could be fatal. If you are not knocked unconscious, do you know where you are? Do you know anything about the emergency 112 number? Indeed, do you have a mobile phone or is your battery flat? In all of those circumstances a relatively minor accident could be lethal. That is because of what is known as the golden hour principle: if you receive treatment within the first hour you are more likely not only to have your life saved but also to have a reduction in the intensity of injuries.
My message to you is quite simple: this is a great device, it will save lives, it will save money, but we need the public authorities to get their finger out and get on with this, because they are the ones who are dragging us back.
That is why we need eCall, which is a pan-European in-vehicle emergency call system based on the 112 emergency number. If you have an accident, a device within the vehicle will be triggered by the airbag going off, by a sudden rise in temperature in the car, by the car overturning or by sudden deceleration. When it is triggered it will send data – such as the time, location and identification of the vehicle – to a public safety answering point, which will then alert the emergency services who will come rushing to your aid. This device could also be triggered manually and have a voice call so you could communicate with the emergency services.
I know there are some issues about privacy, but let us be clear that this system works only when it is triggered in an accident and is not a device for tracing where you are when you are driving. This came out of the Emerge project, which was funded by the Fifth Framework Programme, and I should emphasise that much of the technology is here now and some cars already have it. However, there is no common platform.
We need this because 40 000 people are killed on our roads every year and 1.6 million people are injured. The cost is EUR 160 billion, or 2% of the EU’s GDP. We hope to halve the number of deaths by 2010.
Thus eCall is the first building block in the Commission’s Intelligent Car Initiative. Most measures are designed to stop accidents happening, but accidents will inevitably happen and it is in those circumstances that we need eCall. Research has shown that it will reduce the response time in rural areas by 50% and in urban areas by up to 40%. That will save 2500 lives, reduce serious injuries by 15% and so cut road-traffic accident bills by EUR 22 billion a year. It will also cut accident-related congestion by about another EUR 4 billion a year. Therefore, it is a great idea.
Unfortunately, it is a very complicated idea, because a huge range of stakeholders need to come together – the car industry, the telecoms industry, emergency services, public authorities – to get this introduced on a coherent basis on a common platform. That is why the eCall Driving Group was set up. It has produced a Memorandum of Understanding, which binds stakeholders to implement equal and agreed principles and an agreed timetable whereby we will have full-scale tests in 2007, PSAPs will be upgraded by the end of 2007 and we will introduce this in all new vehicles in 2009.
We have over 50 signatures, but unfortunately only seven are from Member States and ironically one is from a non-Member State – Switzerland. If there is no commitment to this scheme from the public authorities it will not happen, because the industry cannot justify the research without the commitment of public authorities.
What is needed? We need to publicise 112 as a lot of people do not know about it. This system requires enhanced 112, which involves caller location. Member States have an obligation to have it under the 2002 directive, but many of them do not. We need to have PSAPs upgraded to deal with this. Many countries are doing that at the moment, but there is still a long way to go.
This will cost money: the device in the car will cost anything from EUR 150 to EUR 450, but, if done properly, the price will come down. We need the PSAPs to be upgraded. This will cost about EUR 4.5 billion a year. However, set against savings of EUR 26 billion, there is a huge cost benefit to this device."@en1
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