The European Commission has adopted a measure to ensure that by 2015 new cars and light vehicles will be able to call the emergency services automatically in the event of an accident.

The Commission wants the life-saving eCall system to be fitted to all new models from 2015. eCall automatically dials Europe's single emergency number 112 in the event of a serious accident and communicates the vehicle's location to the emergency services. According to some estimates, eCall could speed emergency response times by 40% in urban areas and 50% in the countryside, and save up to 2,500 lives a year.

Commission Vice-President Sim Kallas, responsible for transport, said, "These measures are the first adopted under the Intelligent Transport Systems Directive. They address the upgrading of emergency call response centres, to receive and process 112 eCalls, including calls from vehicles registered in any EU country. Together with my colleagues responsible for Digital Agenda and Industry Vice Presidents Neelie Kroes and Antonio Tajani, I will pursue our joint efforts to ensure that by 2015 the introduction of the eCall service in the whole European Union will be effective."

The Commission's aim is for a fully functional eCall service to introduced all over the European Union as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.