Emergency vehicle-response system goes under test

The eCall system aims to improve road safety by automatically communicating with the emergency services in the event of an accident, even if the driver and passengers are unable to speak due to injury.

When an airbag is deployed, the system automatically calls ‘112’, the international emergency contact number. A wireless Cinterion machine identification module (MIM) then transfers information between two modems, which includes the vehicle’s exact location and registration details.

By doing so, the emergency-response times can be significantly reduced, particularly to incidents in remote locations where times can be cut by up to 50 per cent.

Tests were carried out on the InnovITS ADVANCE track at MIRA because it has several of its own private networks that can be manipulated to replicate the network environments of everything from city centres to remote woodlands where GPS and mobile signal fails.

‘You don’t have to look for that special hill with a bit of forest about 100 miles away,’ said Phil Pettitt, chief executive officer of InnovITS, adding: ‘The tests were done over a private network so nobody was worried about these messages leaking out and all of a sudden getting the emergency services on site.’