Infighting clouds hopes of car-safety deal

By Peter Chapman

Date: 05/02/04

EUROPEAN governments are set to choose weather forecasting and star-gazing ahead of cutting road deaths in a row over car-radar systems, EU officials admitted this week.

These can be fitted into cars as an added option for a few hundred euro and would help to prevent frontal collisions by overriding the driver and slowing down the car when it is dangerously close to another vehicle.

But a battle has broken out between supporters of a consortium of leading car firms and critics who claim the radar devices might interfere with satellite-based weather forecasting and astronomy systems - making it harder to predict the weather or see distant stars.

Erkki Liikanen, the enterprise and information society commissioner, supports the short-range automotive radar frequency allocation (SARA) scheme, which is backed by DaimlerChrysler, Jaguar, Saab, BMW, Fiat and Porsche.

The Finn launched a road safety campaign last Autumn with Max Mosely, the Formula One motor-racing supremo, which made a virtue of the radar devices.

But European Voice has learned that technical policy experts from member states are so divided on the issue that a July deadline set by the Commission for approval of the system is unlikely to be met.

"How do you balance looking at a new galaxy with saving the lives of, say 250 people?" asked one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"But if I had to bet, I would say it won't be approved. There are too many interests and too many administrations that are unwilling to take a risk," he added.

The issue is being thrashed out by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), the pan-European group of telecom experts that are leading technical discussions on the issue.

France is heading a growing list of member countries citing concerns from bodies such as EUMETNET, which represents EU forecasters. They claim the radar would clog up the part of the airwaves they use to measure the vertical water vapour content of the atmosphere.

The PSA Group, makers of Peugeot and Citröen, and Renault, oppose the scheme, provoking claims that Paris is only rejecting it in order to support its car industry.

The European Commission has the right to issue the 45-country CEPT with a mandate to examine technical issues relating to services that use "radio spectrum". But CEPT's disagreements can prevent the Commission making a final decision on how scarce airwaves are used.

The Commission and industry have pushed a compromise deal that would set an upper limit of 8.3% for the proportion of cars that can be fitted with radar, using the so-called 24 gigahertz band, for the next ten years. This technology is ready to be placed in cars, using microprocessors already in use in telecoms equipment.

Another part of the airwaves, the 79 gigahertz band, would be cleared for cars that will use more advanced technology, as yet undeveloped. This less-congested part of the airwaves would be available to car companies in the longer term.

But the plan received a cool response at a CEPT meeting in Turkey last week.

In a separate development, the EU and the US are expected to thrash out a deal over Europe's Galileo navigation satellite system by the end of this month, allowing Galileo to interoperate with the Pentagon's Global Positioning System (GPS).

The EU assuaged American fears that the highest-security parts of Galileo might interfere with military applications on the GPS system.

Car radar systems can be fitted in cars as an added option and would help prevent frontal collisions. However, a row has broken out between supporters of a consortium of leading car firms and critics who say the radar systems could interfere with satellite-based weather forecasting and astronomy systems. The issue is being dealt with by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), a pan-European group of telecom experts that are leading technical discussions on the issue.

http://www.cept.org/ http://www.cept.org/

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