Benefits of Automatic Crash Notification for Traffic Management

eCall is an electronic safety technology giving automatic notification of vehicles involved in a "crash situation" to the emergency services, whilst the vehicle is in a mobile phone coverage area. The principal benefits of eCall are reported to be safety-related; alerting emergency services to the exact location of an incident allows quicker and more effective medical assistance. However, recent work for the Highways Agency (HA) and for the European Commission have, for the first time, identified and quantified the potential benefits in utilising eCall data for traffic management and congestion reduction. This paper briefly reviews the European situation with eCall and describes some of the potential implications for the HA if eCall were to be implemented in the UK.