Telematics Firms Support APCO Guidelines
Telematics providers are supporting a best practices document released by APCO in late Aug. But the document doesn’t address at least one critical issue: How calls are to be routed to 911 centers, a subject of past congressional legislation.
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In 2003, OnStar and ATX North America fought back a proposal on Capitol Hill that would require direct connection to PSAPs of automatic collision and emergency service calls from telematics-equipped vehicles. Proponents hoped to fold the measure into the Omnibus Highway Bill.
Chris Fischer, an official at Valley Communications Center in Wash. and chmn. of the APCO Telematics Committee, said call routing would likely a discussion topic with telematics companies, though it wasn’t the major focus of the best practices guidelines. Instead, the problem E911 dispatchers want to address is that the 3 U.S. telematics firms interact differently with PSAPS, Fischer said. Public safety officials undertook the best practices report in hopes of building better relations with telematics operators.
“As devices got more prolific, we felt it was very important that we build a relationship with the telematics companies who were interested,” Fisher said. “From a PSAP perspective, we felt it was very important to understand their issues. It was more of a case of building a dialogue, getting communications going.”
Officials with OnStar and ATX, the 2 major U.S. telematics firms, said in general they supported the APCO guidelines, which were approved at APCO’s annual meeting Montreal in Aug. and released late last month. “OnStar participated in the development of the APCO guidelines and we endorse these initiatives,” said the company, a General Motors subsidiary. ATX said: “We recognize the fact these standards were developed by experienced PSAP personnel -- the very people with whom we interface in emergencies -- and were the result of a thorough examination that included actual on-site reviews of telematics response centers and opinion research from many PSAPs, including those that handle a high percentage of telematics emergency calls.”
But telematics officials told us they saw little need for similar guidelines on how data is sent from crash sites to PSAPs. One public safety official observed that under current practices telematics firms have to devote considerable resources to keeping their PSAP lists up to date, which they wouldn’t have to do if more information were relayed directly to 911 centers.
Several tests are underway of how telematics call centers can route more crash information to PSAPs, said Gary Wallace, vp external affairs for ATX-North America. “It’s an issue that really gets down to what’s going to be the preferred route,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any consensus within the public safety community as to what’s best to do.”
The number of telematics emergency calls also likely wouldn’t justify spending extensive time developing rules, Wallace said. “Are you going to build an infrastructure to handle 7,000 calls a year?” he asked. “You have to have some consensus as to how much of this data is relevant and who do you bring it to. How much is it worth from a PSAP standpoint to bring in maybe 80 calls a year?”
- Howard Buskirk