ATX and BMW France certified for eCall

Sharon

Sharon Gill

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28th August 2009

The service is standard in most BMW models in France.

Vehicles activated with the BMW Assist service provided by ATX use satellite location technology to pinpoint the location of a vehicle whenever airbags are deployed after a crash or when the motorist presses an in-vehicle SOS button to summon help.

The transmission of the location data is accompanied by an automatic phone call from the vehicle to the telematics response centre, which then integrates that information with crash and sensor data used to help indicate accident severity to emergency responders as well as information on file at ATX about the customer and the vehicle.

After determining an emergency truly exists, the telematics response centre uses its proprietary database of emergency responders to identify the agency with jurisdiction at the site of the emergency and transmits the necessary information via voice.

Originally introduced in Germany, ATX has assisted BMW in recent years in expanding the coverage area of its location-based in-vehicle emergency notification service to include not only France, but also Italy, the UK, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Andorra, San Marino and Monaco.

ATX provides in-vehicle emergency notification and response service to more than one million subscribers in North America and Europe, and has helps guide emergency responders to more than 10,000 in-vehicle emergencies every year.