Thousands of deaths could be prevented with advanced vehicle collision notifications, whitepaper says
The advancement of automatic collision notification (ACN) could prevent 2,129 deaths annually but a new whitepaper presented during CES says faster adoption is stalled.
ACN first emerged in the mid-1990s, with OnStar as the first adopter, according to the paper completed by INTRADO, a public safety communications provider and SBD, an automotive research and consulting firm.
Traditional emergency responses rely on witness, occupant, and bystanders to call 911, which can take several minutes, the paper says.
The answering of calls and dispatch can be delayed for many reasons including occupants having severe injuries or unconsciousness, rural crash sits, poor cellular coverage, and low visibility because of the time of day or weather.
Callers also can provide poor information because they are confused or distressed.
Studies show that reducing accident response delays to below 7 minutes could prevent 2,139 deaths annually, or 13.2% of traffic fatalities, the paper says. It adds that delays beyond 7 minutes significantly increases mortality risk for severe injuries and more than 12 minutes increases mortality by 46%. The average time for response in the U.S. is 10 minutes, the report says.
A survey of 5,000 drivers found that 73% have confidence in road safety but only 19% believe meaningful progress has been made in the past five years.
Thirty-six percent of drivers know someone who was involved in a crash in the past year and 25% have personally been in a crash since 2020.
Eight percent of crash occupants were unable to call for help.
“This gap is particularly striking when considering that the U.S. has significantly higher road casualty rates compared to other developed Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development markets, which includes most major world economies,” the paper says.
Leveraging advancements to improve post-crash processes is important in the nation, the paper says.
The technology has advanced through different stages to Advanced Automatic Collision Notification (ACCN) and Next Generation AAC (NG-AACN), the report says.
NG-AACN works with Vehicle Emergency Data Set (VEDS) to convey information through a Next Generation 911 (NG9-1-1) network, according to the paper. VEDS is a dataset that categorizes data into high, medium, and low priority and passes it to an emergency communications center (EEC). NG9-1-1 is able to harness the data available to provide routing to specialized centers in fractions of a second, it says.
At the EEC, the NG-AACN makes the data available through call handling equipment (CHE) and expedites the information to computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and emergency responders.
Crash-to-care is positioned to take a step forward, the paper says. Injury severity predictor scoring, for instance, can convey the severity of a collision, including the risk to life.
“Conveying this in a common, standardized method is key to making it usable for the 911 community,” the paper says.
Infrastructure vendors are using Internet of Things (IoT) to turn fixed traffic and intersection cameras into sensors to enable 911 calls or giving ECCs access to the cameras.
OEMs have the tools to deploy AACN via vehicle sensors that can detect crashes and on-board telematics that can transmit data, the paper says. OEMs that start now can position themselves as safety leaders for consumers.
Conversations are happening between OEMs, industry, and government bodies but adoption is stalled, the paper says.
“Moving toward full NG-AACN maturity will require collaboration across automotive OEMs, suppliers, TSPs, ECCs, and regulators to align implementation standards and prioritize solutions that reduce complexity rather than add to it,” the paper says.
It should take seconds, not minutes, for a call to be initiated with important collision details, including the number of occupants in a vehicle and occupant information, the report says. That information should be transmitted to a call center were triage is started and then routed to an ECC where triage continues and response is dispatched.
However, in order to do this OEMs and Tier-1 hardware, sensor, and telematic providers must advance, along with call center operators, emergency data brokers, CAD providers, and emergency services.
“AACN has the potential to fundamentally enhance post-crash workflows by transmitting precise and rich crash data instantly upon vehicle sensor detection, removing part of the human communication bottleneck entirely to enable,” the paper says.
As an urban example, the paper gives a scenario where an AACN triggers 911 and live camera feeds are accessed based on the geolocation provided. The nearest trauma center pre-positions a trauma team, while roadside towing is dispatched and traffic signal management systems reroute congestion at adjacent intersections all within seconds.
In a rural scenario, AACN initiates helicopter dispatch based on severity and location, highway patrol responds, the nearest hospital activates trauma protocol and traffic is diverted, the paper says.
To accelerate adoption of ACCN, the industry must work on data standardization, ECC readiness, and workflow integration, the paper says.
Data standardization includes turning raw crash signals into actional emergency intelligence. VEDS define common structure for crash information but adoption is voluntary.
“OEMs and TSPs continue to originate data in proprietary formats, which creates interoperability and integration challenges at the ecosystem level,” the paper says. “The good news is that VEDS does not require OEMs to rearchitect every vehicle platform; an intermediary layer can ingest OEM specific payloads, map them into VEDS, and then deliver either VEDS formatted data to ECCs that support it or traditional voice relay and other channels (including text-to-911) for legacy environments.”
The U.S. 911 system relies on about 6,000 ECCs, many of which are small operations with fewer than five 911 professional roles, the paper says. Funding constraints limit their ability to upgrade. Upgrading the systems requires federal and state support to bridge this gap and ensure end-to-end modernization, the paper says.
Funding also isn’t available to do needed NG9-1-1 networks and CHE and CAD systems upgrades that would optimize workflow integration.
“Meanwhile, TSPs have little incentive to push VEDS adoption because it threatens their call center business model,” the paper says. “Additionally, many OEMs’ telematics stacks were built more than fifteen years ago, with development based on iteration ever since, using and reinforcing custom protocols and data models optimized for their own vehicle architectures with little thought about integration at the ECC.”
Mapping signals to the VEDS standard would require firmware updates across millions of vehicles already in the field, which is a high cost and risky implementation path, the paper says.
SBD has created an ACN index to help structure framework to help measure progress and guide the technical roadmap for crash notification system capability based on outcome. It defines five stages of evolution.
“The Collision Notification Index is a shared language and structure for OEMs, TSPs, ECCs, and regulators to understand where outcome-based deployments sit today and the key enablers needed to advance maturity and realize the full potential of AACN,” the paper says.
The U.S. sits between CN 1.0 and 2.0 with the best-in-class deployments including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors (via OnStar), and Toyota.
Representatives from General Motors, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (Auto Innovators), and Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) discussed vehicle telematics and consumer safety during a Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) OEM Summit session at the 2024 SEMA Show.
OMEs and regulators should act now, the paper says.
“Until now, safety features have primarily focused on crash prevention and reducing risk before and during a crash,” the paper says. “Post-crash technologies, such as AACN, present a new opportunity to differentiate.”
About 41% of surveyed drivers expect AACN as a standard feature, the paper found. Yet, 46% answered that they don’t have the service.
“While privacy concerns are frequently cited as a primary hurdle to broader sharing of driver and occupant data with the automotive industry, 94% of drivers agree that using vehicle and occupant data for improved safety outcomes outweighs perceived privacy risks,” the paper says.
The paper also adds that a federal mandate is plausible in the future and OEMs that deploy AACN ahead of the regulatory mandates will have a three- to five-year advantage.
“NHTSA has several regulatory and policy mechanisms available to drive AACN adoption among OEMs, including the statutory authority to issue Federal Motor Vehicle Standards (FMVSS) and mandate new safety features,” the paper says. “NHTSA has shown it will act when the benefits are clear, as shown by FMVSS No. 127, which requires AEB on all light vehicles by September 2029.”
The federal government could also develop funding legislation to support ECC upgrades to NG9-1-1.
The development of the national framework for the transition to NG9-1-1 and IP-based delivery of 911 calls enables structured data formats like VEDS 3.1 and ACCN conveyance on NG9-1-1 infrastructure, the paper says. This creates conditions to include AACN in National Car Assessment Program (NCAP) ratings, the paper says.
“Bottom line, the regulatory landscape is primed for AACN adoption: the foundational standards exist, infrastructure is evolving, and there is hope of federal funding for more ECCs to upgrade to NG9-1-1,” the paper says. “The missing piece is proactive action or a mandate on OEMs, likely through a Congressional directive or NCAP inclusion. Based on similar legislative timelines, this could be achieved in three to five years,11 with integrators that embed AACN data into ECC workflows becoming critical ecosystem partners.”
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