Report – faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall

Table of contents

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
Shaskin – Fotolia

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall

7th pictures

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
Digades

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Here the boss is still testing himself: Digades owner Lutz Berger with a BMW R 1200 GS on the road in Cape Town during test drives in South Africa.

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
Digades

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The retrofittable dguard emergency call is triggered automatically or manually and transmitted directly to the nearest rescue control center. If desired, private contact persons can be informed in parallel by SMS or email.

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
Digades

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According to the provider, the dguard components meet the test standards of
Motorcycle manufacturers and their requirements for service life, climate,
mechanical shock or electromagnetic compatibility.

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
DEKRA

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Typical motorcycle accident simulated in the Dekra crash test: a car turning in overlooks the biker on the priority road.

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
Digades

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Motorcyclists can manually send the SOS call when others are in need.

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
Sashkin – Fotolia, goldencow_images – Fotolia

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Picture gallery: faster help thanks to eCall.

Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
MOTORCYCLE

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The system components on the motorcycle: According to the provider, the dguard components meet the test standards of motorcycle manufacturers and their requirements for service life, climate, mechanical shock or electromagnetic compatibility.

counselor

traffic & business

Report – faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall

Report – faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall
SOS system for motorcycles

Europe relies on the automatic emergency call to speed up the rescue of accident victims. The infrastructure for eCall from cars is still under construction. But the world’s first SOS system for motorcycles is already available.

Brigitte Haschek

09/01/2016

On a Monday evening in early May there was a fatal accident in the Lower Franconian district of Rhon-Grabfeld: In a left turn, a 35-year-old BMW driver apparently lost control of his machine. He comes off the road and ends up seriously injured seven meters from the road after the fall. Drivers passing the scene of the accident cannot see him and he is unable to move. With the courage of desperation, the 35-year-old finally sets the lining of his helmet on fire to draw attention to himself with the rising smoke.

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There are always tragic cases in which motorists also die in their wrecks because they are not discovered after a crash. And: after an accident, every second counts until first aid is provided for the victim. The faster this happens, the less severe the consequences can be. According to calculations by the EU Commission, the immediate notification of an accident to the operations center with exact location information shortens the time until the emergency services arrive in rural areas by 50 percent and even in urban areas by 40 percent. This gain in time can save several hundred lives every year in the EU and alleviate the severity of injuries for tens of thousands of accident victims. For this reason, the European legislator initiated the eCall project (e for emergency), which was then poured into a corresponding EU regulation at the beginning of 2014 (see section “That’s happening in Brussels”). This relies – initially on cars – on an automatic emergency call function ex works. In the spring, BMW announced that it would be offering a motorcycle eCall version derived from the car from 2017 for individual models at an additional cost.

Additional anti-theft alarm function

The Saxon electronics manufacturer Digades, on the other hand, has already done pioneering work in terms of automatic emergency calls for the broad mass of motorcyclists and also for the producers: its motorcycle eCall called dguard has been on the market since June at a price of just under 480 euros, which is installed on all current models can be. If the system sensors register a crash, an SOS call is automatically sent. In addition, the eCall rescuer has a theft warning function for retrofitting: As soon as the parked machine is moved, a silent alarm goes to the owner.

“We have received consistently positive feedback since the market launch,” says Digades boss Lutz Berger, himself a passionate motorcyclist. The specialist trade goes with them, the marketing in the online shop is ongoing and it will be delivered throughout Europe. Motorcycle manufacturers also showed interest: “The system is already being tested internally at a European brand, and we are in negotiations with another manufacturer,” reports Multistrada driver Berger.

Start with false start

According to the Digades boss, the final spurt from the idea to dguard series production began with a failure for the Zittau electronics company, which has been supplying the fuel pump electronics for the BMW K 1300 R since 2010. According to Berger, the eCall pre-development for a large motorcycle manufacturer up to the utility model – a kind of patent light – was completed at the beginning of 2014. The follow-up order, to the chagrin of the Saxons, did not go to them, but to a global system supplier.

“In the summer we made the decision to invest 2.5 million euros in further development,” says Berger. Three dozen employees of the family company are promoting eCall made in Saxony in six sub-projects. In order to be able to recognize the emergency, environmental influences, temporal processes, false triggers, possible errors and accident scenarios must be taken into account. The latter come from the database of the Gidas (German in-Depth Accident Study), which is located at the Medical University of Hanover and the Technical University of Dresden. “We initially evaluated 3,000 real accidents in order to filter out typical motorcycle crash constellations,” says Christoph Lebelt, who heads the development team. These findings flowed into the software development as well as data from test drives that started in spring 2015.

Successfully completed crash program

This also includes 850 test kilometers with 90 falls, which Paul Robbach, junior European champion in enduro sport, contributed on his KTM EXC 300. Company owner Berger, his wife Kerstin and son Tim made test drives on the demanding Spanish circuit Circuito de Almeria.

In total, the family covered more than 30,000 kilometers in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, California, South Africa, Spain and Portugal without any false alarms. According to the manufacturer, the trial by fire for the dguard took place in the Dekra Crash Test Center in Neumunster: All previously defined accident scenarios have successfully completed the crash program.

The system components


Report - faster help in the event of accidents thanks to eCall


MOTORCYCLE

The system components on the motorcycle: According to the provider, the dguard components meet the test standards of motorcycle manufacturers and their requirements for service life, climate, mechanical shock or electromagnetic compatibility.

According to the provider, the dguard components meet the test standards of motorcycle manufacturers and their requirements for service life, climate, mechanical shock or electromagnetic compatibility.

Crash detection:

  • active from around 20 km / h to over 300 km / h
  • automatic deactivation when stationary, so no release if you fall over
  • no emergency call triggering while driving, so no false alarms on the way
  • All sensors, which deliver data such as speed, angle of inclination, acceleration, driver present and the like, are used to different degrees for detection

Theft warning:

  • Activation and deactivation via app
  • Movement and vibration of the motorcycle are recognized, the sensitivity is adjustable
  • If the motorcycle is moved without authorization, a notification is sent via app and SMS
  • minimum power consumption with active anti-theft alarm

The automatic emergency call eCall will initially come in cars from 2018. Motorcycles and commercial vehicles are to follow.

The EU project HeERO (Harmonized eCall European Pilot) has been promoting the introduction of an automatic emergency call from crashed vehicles for five years. The third stage, called I-HeERO, is currently taking effect with the establishment of the necessary infrastructure in the European rescue control centers – more than 260 of them in Germany – which can be reached uniformly on the emergency number 112. The necessary upgrades and retrofits should be completed and functional by October 1st of next year. From April 1, 2018, all new car models in the EU must be equipped with the 112-based eCall. Corresponding regulations for trucks, the transport of dangerous goods as well as long-distance buses and coaches are to follow.

The same applies to motorcycles, which the makers of I-HeERO seem to be a tough nut to crack. The progress report presented at the beginning of June by the consortium, which includes eleven EU countries, 58 industrial partners and a large number of other participants, describes the sticking points: technical standards, reliable trigger mechanisms and the avoidance of false alarms. An accident data study has recently been started in order to be able to use the results to develop a special trigger sensor system. BMW and Bosch, who have already gained a lot of experience in the passenger car sector, are also heavily involved in the consortium. The announcement by Bavaria that eCall will be offered as optional equipment for some of its motorcycle models from 2017 indicates that they are likely to rely heavily on original equipment ex works. This leaves out the large number of motorcycles and therefore does not exploit the full potential of the new safety system. It is still unclear whether retrofit solutions will be taken into account in the future regulation.

What about data security?

Data economy and earmarking are anchored in the eCall regulation.

The information transmitted from the car is limited to a minimum and to the time and exact location of the accident. Rescue centers are not allowed to pass this data on to third parties without the express permission of the person concerned; the driver must also be able to delete them easily and permanently. The EU legislator sees the right to privacy being adequately safeguarded. “From a data protection point of view, there is little objection to eCall at first,” says Thilo Weichert, former data protection officer for Schleswig-Holstein.

The on-board mobile radio unit only connects to the network when an emergency call actually has to be made. There is no permanent tracking with the formation of an exact movement image, as is possible, for example, with switched on mobile phones. Weichert sees this as much more critical, however, for additional services that allow the vehicle and the Internet to grow together more and more via the eCall platform – especially in the car.

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