Strasbourg, 26/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - An automatic dialling system for reporting road accidents, eCall, will have to be installed in all new vehicles from October 2015 onwards, according to a European Parliament vote on Wednesday 26 February. MEPs voted by 485 to 151 for a report by Olga Sehnalova (S&D, the Czech Republic) on reducing the number of deaths on European roads and speeding up arrival times for emergency services, which will be automatically informed of accidents and a vehicle's location via the 112 emergency telephone number, even if drivers are dead or unconscious. The Parliament says it might be possible to save some 2,500 lives each year and reduce the severity of injuries.
In order to protect privacy, the MEPs have restricted the information that will be supplied in the event of an accident (the type of accident, the category of vehicle, type of fuel, time, vehicle location, direction in which the vehicle was driving and the number of safety belts in use). It was not certain that the report would go through because some MEPs, particularly those on the civil liberties committee, were unhappy about protection of privacy. The liberals say that there should have been a measure to have a device installed to deactivate the automatic calling mechanism. The rapporteur argues that eCall is not a surveillance system and is only activated in the event of accidents.
It was planned that a report by Philip de Backer (ALDE, Belgium) on the infrastructure needed to ensure uniform deployment of eCall in Europe would be adopted the same day, but the rapporteur wanted to postpone the vote to a later date so that an initial agreement could be negotiated with the Council of Ministers in advance and validated by the plenary before the European elections. (MD)