Crashed cars to text message for help

Crashed cars to text message for help
There is no good place to have a car crash - but some places are worse than others. In a foreign country, for instance, trying to explain via cellphone that you are upside down in a ditch when you cannot speak the local language can fatally delay the arrival of the emergency services. If you are conscious at all, that is.

But an answer may be at hand. Researchers funded by the European Commission are beginning tests in January of a system called E-merge that automatically senses when a car has crashed and sends a text message telling emergency services in the local language that the accident has taken place.

The system was developed by ERTICO, a transport research organisation based in Brussels, Belgium. Cars are fitted with a cellphone-sized device attached to the underside of the dashboard which is activated by the same sensor that triggers the airbag in a crash. The device includes a cellphone circuit, a GPS positioning unit, and a microphone and loudspeaker.

It registers the severity of the crash by reading the deceleration data from the airbag's sensor. Using GPS information, it works out which country the car is in, and from this it determines in which language to compose an alert message detailing the precise location of the accident.

The device then automatically makes a call to the local emergency service.