Intelligent Car Initiative

The Intelligent Car Initiative ( = Intelligent Car Initiative ) is an initiative of the European Commission in order to concentrate all measures that relate to "intelligent" cars. This refers to vehicles that are equipped with modern information and communication technologies (ICT ) to improve road safety or traffic flow. An even older example is the anti -lock braking system ABS. A more recent system is the electronic brake assist to help the driver make optimum brake or brakes even operated automatically when a collision is imminent and no reaction from the driver comes.

Beginnings and goals

The initiative was launched by a communication from the Commission on 15 February 2006 and launched on 23 February of the same year in Brussels. It aims to make the roads safer in the European Union, especially to reduce the number of more than 1.2 million accidents a year, to reduce the number of traffic jams and reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Structure and fields of work

The Intelligent Car Initiative is based on three pillars:

• The eSafety initiative, the Forum uses them to coordinate all those measures that are interested in issues of road safety and the accelerated implementation of advanced safety systems,
• The research projects that explore the 6th and 7th Research Framework Programme of the European Union systems of road safety and traffic management, which are based on information and communication technologies,
• The measures that should lead to a better understanding of these systems among decision makers, car drivers and consumers. The latter measures the Intelligent Car web page that has enabled the European Commission in early September 2007 heard.

Focus

Because of the variety of possible actions and fields of action, the Commission announced in a second communication dated 17 September 2007, mainly to focus on some key challenges. These are the introduction in September 2010 of the automatic emergency call system eCall, the mandatory use of ESP in 2012, a stronger working towards efficient fuel consumption and CO2 savings and the safe installation and use in the vehicle of mobile, used outside the car devices such as mobile phones or navigation systems.

In cooperation with the European research project PReVENT the new message, again as part of a major exhibition of intelligent vehicles, on 18 September 2007, the international press and an interested audience in Versailles, France presented. In addition to the author of the initiative, the European Commissioner for the Information Society Viviane Reding, the French Research Minister Valérie Pécresse, the Chinese Minister of Science Gang Wan and the Portuguese transport and telecommunications minister Mário Lino Soares were present at this occasion.