STOCKHOLM, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Starting from Sunday, Sweden's emergency and rescue service, SOS Alarm, can receive automatic alarms from cars through a built-in technology called eCall.
SOS Alarm's head of IT, Mattias Hindfelt, told Swedish Television on Sunday that the technology is a great help in situations where a car accident has occurred and the driver is seriously injured or in shock and is therefore unable to call the national emergency number 112.
"Often people are in shock when something has happened and they will talk at length about what has occurred, but it is usually hard for us to get a person who seeks help to state where they are," Hindfelt said.
Cars with the new, built-in technology will automatically send a signal to SOS Alarm when a violent incident has occurred.
The eCall system will also transmit information about where the vehicle is located and what time the incident took place, as well as details about the vehicle itself.
The emergency and rescue services are now supposed to prioritize alarms raised through eCall since they can indicate that the driver is unconscious or seriously injured and unable to call in.
While few vehicles in Sweden are equipped with eCall today, that looks set to change soon.
"As of the first quarter of next year, all car models in the EU should have this equipment," Hindfelt explained.
The EU started dealing with the question of requiring car manufacturers to install this type of technology back in 1999 already. The reason it has taken so long to reach this point is that it was necessary to develop a cross-European standard for all car manufacturers, Swedish Television reported.
"We will have to get used to the fact that the introduction of new technology does not always happen fast," Hindfelt commented.
