ADAC, the German equivalent of the ANWB, argues for a more effective implementation of eCall, the system that should alert the emergency services in the event of an accident. According to the organization, that process is often still too cumbersome, so that precious minutes can be lost.
Since March 31, 2018, the system is mandatory at European level for all new type-approvals. There is only one ‘but’: car manufacturers may also install their own emergency call system in the car instead of eCall. These systems do not send a signal directly to the emergency services, but first alert an internal emergency center of the manufacturers themselves, which then forward the call to the emergency services. This is not exactly effective: a practical test by the ADAC showed that in one case it took 58 seconds for the manufacturer’s emergency center to respond to the call. In addition, it appears that the language skills are sometimes not in order and that the position data of the car is not always correctly passed on to the emergency services.
Unlike its own emergency call systems, eCall sends out a direct signal to the emergency services. According to the ADAC, that is much more effective. That is why the agency wants eCall to be mandatory for all new vehicles, not just new type approvals. In addition, the manufacturer-specific emergency call must be easy to convert to eCall. When both systems are present in the vehicle in parallel, the driver must be able to indicate a preference. In that case, manufacturers should improve their own emergency call systems: there should be no delay in reporting the accident to the emergency services.