According to the motoring organisation, 2% of UK roads have no 2G coverage – meaning no ability to make a call or send a text. It adds that 29,000 miles of road have only partial coverage and that 14,500 miles of roads have no 3G coverage, meaning a smartphone can’t be used.
All of this suggests that the European eCall initiative, in which all vehicles will be required to dial 112 automatically in the event of a serious road accident, while sending airbag deployment, impact sensor information and GPS coordinates to local emergency agencies, may be less effective than anticipated.
For obvious reasons, eCall will be more useful – vital, even – in rural locations than in urban environments. But it looks like with the mobile phone coverage statistics released by RAC Foundation, even though a car might have eCall, the message might well not get through.
