Brussels, 22/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The members of the Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) platform have called for an EU-wide legal and technical framework to be adopted swiftly with a view to marketing intelligent, connected cars by 2019.
The report, published by the European Commission on Thursday 21 January, is the fruit of the joint labours of players from both the public (member states and regions) and private (insurance, motor car and telecommunications industries) sectors. It provides a series of proposals to try to untangle the legal and technical knots that have resulted from the emergence of new technologies in road transport.
With regard to the technical strand, the platform adopted a framework that will allow rapid deployment of a European intelligent transport system on “Day 1” services, such as hazardous location notifications (road accident, congestion, weather conditions, etc.) and signage applications (safety at intersections, speed limits, etc.) which should be available in the short term. It also agreed on “Day 1'5” services, which are not yet completely ready. These include on-street and off-street parking, coordinated traffic lights and protection of vulnerable road users. The report calls for a standardised C-ITS certification model to support interoperability between vehicles. Agreement was also reached on a series of frequencies for communications. Consideration was given to the issue of access to in-vehicle data in relation to Regulation 2015/758 on type-approval for the roll-out of the eCall system.
With regard to legal issues, the report gives consideration to drivers' legal liability and data protection and privacy. On the first point, it was felt that the driver must always remain in control of the vehicle. It is recommended, however, that vehicle manufacturers, service providers and public authorities use the appropriate level of information (e.g. disclaimers) to raise the user's awareness of the limitation of the information provided, in particular regarding safety critical messages and/or information provided in the absence of physical traffic signage. On the second, the principle was agreed that data sent by vehicles (speed, location, etc.) are “personal data”. Therefore the EU legislation (Directive 95/46/EC) on data privacy and data protection applies. It is recommended that an opt-out possibility should be offered to drivers, authorising the shut-down of the broadcast of in-vehicle data and to foster the principle of “Privacy by Design” and develop systems flexible enough to guarantee full control of personal data by the data subject.
The C-ITS platform calls on the Commission to use these conclusions as a basis in the drafting of future regulations and standards for deploying intelligent transport systems in the EU. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc is strongly committed to the digitisation of transport and to new technologies (see EUROPE 11404). She is looking to bring forward a blueprint for intelligent transport systems in the second half of this year. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)