September 10, 2025
The RAC Foundation Report on eCall
The RAC Foundation has recently published a report on eCall, highlighting the achievements of deploying the service in the UK, namely high adoption, standardisation and robust functionality. A brief summary of the report is provided through the RAC Foundation article.
At the same time, Professor Nick Reed, author of the report highlights several system limitations, which need to be addressed to unleash the full road safety potential of the service. False Alarms, Need for User Training, Emergency Response Integration, and Data Use and Access Issues are brought forward. Challenges ahead and recommendations for the future are also provided.
The conclusions and recommendations by Dr Nick Reed are strongly supported by VESOS Director and co-founder Danny Woolard who states “Since 2018, hundreds of thousands of eCall alerts have been connected, of which tens of thousands were automatic airbag deployments. However, it has been a frustration that we haven’t yet maximised the benefit of all the eCall data. This is partly due to a lack of awareness of and misunderstanding about eCall data, with an overly cautious interpretation of privacy regulations.”
VESOS is currently working together with TISA and SENSORIS on a solution to detect and mitigate false alarms through a vehicle sensor data feedback loop and TPEG2-TEC alerts to vehicles in the vicinity of a deployed eCall.
Matthias Unbehaun, Executive Director of TISA, is pleased with the collaborative progress made so far, thanks to the effective coordination of the working group by SENSORIS chairman András Csepinszky. The VESOS response to the RAC Foundation report was recently covered through an article in Highways News.
Background: eCall is mandatory on all new vehicle models in EU and the UK as of 31 March 2018 under the Directive (EU) 2017/79. This has resulted in 99.5% of all new cars sold in the UK to be equipped with the service.
