Commission agrees to use of short-range radar
The European Commission has agreed that specific radio frequencies will be allocated for use by the automotive industry to help improve road safety.
Short-range radar – or SRR – will be used to develop new technologies to alert drivers, to mitigate and avoid collisions at highway speeds, to aid parking and reduce the impact of blind spots. This new frequency allocation is part of the Commission’s eSafety programme, which aims to reduce European traffic fatalities by 50 per cent by 2010.
Current radio frequencies permit the use of front-end and rear-facing sensors such as those used in automatic cruise control and parking sensors. The new frequency will allow sensors to detect, and react to, objects around the whole vehicle.
The short-range automotive radar frequency allocation group, known as ‘SARA’, represented by Hogan & Hartson, has been working with the Commission to ensure that the new system would not cause interference to other radio spectrum users.
