Accidental eCall activation in cars lead to 75% false 112 calls in Nederland(nltimes.nl)
14 pointsby giuliomagnifico6 hours ago5 comments
  • cineticdaffodil4 hours ago
    People underestimate the dangers erroneous emergency calls do. Here in germany they automated the emergency call system for the firefighters, thus every person smoking indoors at a public bath would trigger a huge alarm, instead of a "call in and scout ahead" by the comander of the brigade with devastating results on volunteer firefighter numbers. You do not sacrifice your weekend for some datadriven bureaucrats efficiency wank, you would sacrifice it for the community. So they quit in droves. What set out to improve on paper destroyed un practice.
    • cucumber3732842an hour ago
      > Here in germany they automated the emergency call system for the firefighters, thus every person smoking indoors at a public bath would trigger a huge alarm, instead of a "call in and scout ahead" by the comander of the brigade with devastating results on volunteer firefighter numbers. You do not sacrifice your weekend for some datadriven bureaucrats efficiency wank

      Nonsense, peasant!

      Our highly trained paper pushers have crunched the numbers and determined this will save approximately the noise threshold worth of lives over time. Our propaganda people have polished that up, shat it out into the public discourse and the public wants it. You're a bad person if you disagree with any of this and our indoctrinated fanboys will be along to downvote your wrongthink shortly.

  • lbreakjai5 hours ago
    I feel like the title is misleading. It's not 75% of the false calls to 112 originating from eCall activation.

    There's 3.5 millions calls to 112 per year. Out of these, 1 million were not transferred further to the emergency services.

    There's been 37.500 calls to 112 originating from the eCall system. About 28.000 of them were not redirected to the emergency service.

    So, the eCall system helped in about 10.000 cases, and contributed 2.8% of the non-emergency calls to the 112.

    I'm not surprised. I bought a new car in January, and I was unaware of this feature until I read the user manual.

  • aitchnyu3 hours ago
    My Samsung phone was very trigger happy about emergency calls, in India. Once, the call went through, and it seems the service provider prepared for people like me: it would proceed only if I press a number.
    • doubled1122 hours ago
      I was outside talking to some friends one time and heard somebody talking in my pocket. It was an emergency operator.

      The power button on my iPhone must have been pushed the 5 times or whatever it took. It is probably a good feature when it saves a life but a little too easy to waste their time with too.

  • rain_bow8903 hours ago
    I had a big crash last year in The Netherlands on the highway. Before I realized what happened, the car had auto-dialed the emergency number and I was talking to emergency services literally 5 seconds after the crash. They helped to get the appropriate help within a few minutes. Very thankful for the Ecall, didn’t even realize I had this installed.
  • mono4425 hours ago
    All the ideas and regulations introduced by the European Union over the last 10 years regarding cars have been bad, they have done more harm than good and have unnecessarily increased car prices. We should return to the standards from 10 years ago, they were more reasonable and based on common sense. But I guess this is the consequence of politicians and bureucrats living in the ivory tower.