The European Parliament’s Transport Committee, last month approved a proposal for the compulsory fitting of the eCall system to all new cars sold in Europe from 2015.

The eCall system gives an automatic alert to the emergency services, should a car’s on board systems indicate a major accident, through means such as deployment of air bags. The aim is to improve response times by giving exact vehicle coordinates with the alert. Currently less than 1% of cars are fitted with the system and there are many issues with cross boarder compatibility and manufacturer uniformity still to sort out.

There is also concern in some quarters about who may have access to the information, which could have serious implications regarding the allocation of accident repair work.