According to the goal set in 2001 by the Council of State of Finland the number of traffic fatalities annually should be under 250 by the year 2010. This goal calls for a reduction of at least 125 traffic fatalities from the number in 2004. The Pan-European emergency call system (eCall) which was developed under the initiative of the eSafety Forum, composed of the European Commission, industry and other traffic safety actors could help to meet this goal.

The eCall system, which is installed in the vehicle, is based on either the automatic detection of an accident with an instrument or a manual emergency call made by pushing a button. In both cases a normal voice communication is opened to the emergency centre after a small delay. Accident vehicle identification and possible accident severity information is transmitted automatically. The automatic detection of an accident is based on the vehicles sensors or the sensors built into the eCall device. The in-vehicle sensors can detect e.g. triggering of an airbag, intense deceleration, vehicle rollover or a sudden temperature increase.

According to the international estimates show that the eCall system can reduce traffic fatalities by 4-56 annually. Such vague results does not warrant objective decision-making on government participation in the deployment of eCall. In addition, these estimates have not been proportioned to Finnish emergency centre processes or Finnish accident data. The estimates are also not based on the kind of detailed analysis possible in Finland. Based on the above it is clear that the impacts of the eCall system should be explicitly evaluated based on Finnish accident data taking into account local circumstances.