Ecall triggers the alarm: Fire brigade to the supposed accident in Zell am See

Ecall triggers the alarm: Fire brigade to the supposed accident in Zell am See

This day, July 16, 2025, there was a fire brigade in Zell am See, which was triggered by the automatic emergency call system ECALL. The emergency services of the Maishofen and Zell am See fire departments were called to examine a supposed traffic accident on Zellerstrasse. Fortunately, it turned out on site that the affected vehicle was in a workshop for repair and had no accident. Despite the Faux PAS, which the Ecall system caused, this incident throws a light on the functioning and importance of the technology.

ecall is an assistance system that has been mandatory for all newly approved cars and light commercial vehicles in the European Union since 2018. In the event of a serious accident, a free emergency call is automatically discontinued to the emergency number 112, which not only transmits the exact position of the vehicle, but also other important data in order to enable the emergency services to quickly intervene. The emergency call can also be activated without an accident via the Manual SOS key, which can lead to false alarms in some rare cases. In the previous year, around 2,000 false alarms were documented in Salzburg alone, such as Salzburg24 reported.

The functionality of Ecall is uniformly regulated throughout the EU. No data transmission is carried out when driving normal, which minimizes concerns about data protection. Only when the emergency call is activated does the responsible emergency call center receive the necessary data in order to record the Situation and to react accordingly. Interestingly, surveys have shown that a significant part of the population has concerns about the system: 60% of the respondents are familiar with Ecall, but 40% do not even know that it exists. Of particular concerned concerns relate to possible false alarms or hacker attacks, such as the Youreurope .