eCall is short for automatic emergency call, which shall be sent by vehicles after an accident.The systems should report an accident to the standardised emergency number 112 resp. E112 and help dropping the death toll and the gravity of injuries in road traffic by dint of the faster initiated rescue measures.eCall is  part of the eSafety-Initiative of the EU, which aims at halving the number of traffic deaths until 2010. In the year 2004 more than 1,4 million accidents occurred on roads in Europe, thereby 43.000 people were killed and nearly 2 millions of people were injured seriously. In accordance with the European Union, 2.500 lifes could be saved and the servere of injuries could be decreased by 15 percent, with an area-wide implementation. An improvement of the response time of about 40 percent in city-areas and approximately 50 percent in countrified-areas would be generally possible.

With this system the annual external expenses of road traffic could be decreased approximately 26 billion EUR.

The immediate identification of the place of accident should afford to medicate more injured persons in the important “first hour”, which will drop the death toll and also the servere of injuries.The principle of the first hour is based on medical cognitions, which prove that the mortality rate regarding people with heart- or breathing difficulties respectively haemorrhage increases up to 100 percent after an hour after the accident.

With a “Memorandum of Understanding” a couple of EU-member states, automobile associations, industrial enterprises and also the OICA (International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers) stand for this intention. Austria has not signed it by now because among other things, the general conditions in legislative, executive and technical points are still unclear. At present the Union assumes an automatic message of a car which had an accident to a so-called PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point). That would be the public emergency call stations in Austria, which have at present neither the adequate infrastructure, nor enough human resources. After the austrian pilot project with 100 test drivers, which is based on a message to a superior operation centre, the interest of the responsible representatives on european level has been sensitised for this kind of messaging. The Union now evaluates this proposal as well by creating a standardised concept.