An In-vehicle eCall Platform for Efficient Road Safety

eCall is an automatic in-vehicle emergency call service with the main objective is to reduce emergency response to reach an incident location (e.g. accident, crisis situation). When an incident occurs somewhere, the in-vehicle embedded device receives information from the sensors and calls the public safety answering point (PSAP) while sending the received information, such the location (GPS coordinates), the terminal identifier and driving direction for accidents. A voice connection between the vehicle occupants and the PSAP operator will be established aiming to quickly send an emergency unit to the incident location. However, existing eCall systems so far are special and professional purpose equipments. Furthermore, vehicles manufacturers are interested to collect information about the accident statistics and vehicles behavior from their equipments. To overcome this restriction of usage, this paper deals with the development of an eCall platform for large scale usage and for driving assistance in the case of accident. The developed platform is tested in urban and highway areas and some preliminary results are reported.