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Europe launches Intelligent Car Initiative |
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Feb 24, 2006 at 04:00 PM |
 The European Commission has launched an Intelligent Car Initiative. Some 32 technologies were on display at a launch event. The technologies on show included those for mitigating collisions, for night vision, road safety in fog, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, driver hypovigilance detection and pedestrian sensing. Another system - eCall - alerts the emergency services automatically when an accident occurs.
Europe's Information Society and Media (ISM) Commissioner Viviane Reding commented: "Most solutions have now been developed, but take-up is very slow." It is hoped that intelligent vehicles would enable more efficient driving with fewer delays and less congestion, and even reduce the number of road accidents.
The initiative has three objectives: coordinating and supporting the work of relevant stakeholders, citizens, the Member States and industry; supporting research and development (R&D) in the area of smarter, cleaner and safer vehicles and facilitating the take-up of research results; and creating awareness of solutions using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to stimulate demand by users and increase socio-economic acceptance.
The ISM Commissioner reports that every year more than 40,000 people die on Europe's roads, and that congestion costs the EU 50billion euro per year - 0.5 per cent of GDP. By 2010 that figure could rise to one per cent.
Just fitting every vehicle with eCall could reduce the number of fatalities by between five and ten per cent, said Reding. Lateral support systems, which help drivers to change lanes, could reduce the number of accidents by 1500 with only 0.6 per cent penetration rate. A seven per cent penetration rate would mean 14,000 fewer accidents.
Despite the potential, most intelligent systems are not yet on the market. When they are, large-scale deployment takes a long time Reding says that the main barriers are legal and institutional, as well as the economics of automotive competition. The relatively high cost of intelligent systems reduces customer demand.
The research aspects of the initiative will build upon the achievements of the EU's framework programmes for research. Under the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5), which ran from 1999 until 2002, around 100 million euro was invested in road vehicle-related research. Under FP6, which runs until the end of 2006, around 150 million euro has already been invested.
By Dr Mike Cooke
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