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What is the problem/issue being addressed?
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THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEM OF BUS ACCIDENTS: in the EU-28, buses and coaches involved in crashes result in 30,000 severely injured passengers and 150 killed every year. These victims have given rise to roughly €7.6bn in costs for EU-28 tax payers (according to the European Transport Safety Council-ETSC).
THE BUS INDUSTRY THEREFORE NEEDS A NEW SOLUTION TO IMPROVE ITS SAFETY LEVELS: standard Active and Passive Safety devices have reached their limits, and as it is impossible to prevent all bus accidents, the bus sector needs to strengthen its safety proposal with a new type of safety system that makes rescuing the injured much more straightforward, faster and safer.
THE SOLUTION: to save lives after a bus crash, the key element is to have the specific medical equipment on site for all the injured, and enough space to work effectively: this is the only way to save time and lives during the Golden Hour.
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Why is it important for society?
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- The E-RESCUE project is aimed at introducing the first post-accident safety system to facilitate the rescue of victims after a bus accident.
- The E-RESCUE device can be installed in any type of bus seat. So, in the case of a crash, the E-RESCUE device makes it possible to immobilise the victims against the backrest of their seat, without moving them. The device then automatically releases the seat from the base, to be used as the stretcher to transfer victims in the safest and fastest way to the hospital and, at the same time, this gains space inside the vehicle for emergency services to work better and faster. With E-RESCUE a standard bus seat becomes a “life saver seat”.
- E-RESCUE saved up to 70% of total rescue time (30 min vs 2 h) in the extrication of victims, as compared to conventional techniques. E-RESCUE has the potential to halve the actual number of fatalities and severe injuries for bus passengers in bus accidents. Translating this numbers into costs, we could be talking about €3.8bn potential cost savings for society in the EU, every year, if E-RESCUE were implemented on a mass scale on European buses.
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What are the overall objectives?
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The value chain in the bus transport industry has 4 links:
Bus Seat Manufactures ==> Bus Manufactures ==> Bus Operators ==> Other Stakeholders (Society)
The 3 first links are our customers because the E-RESCUE system can be installed anywhere in this chain. The key point is that E-RESCUE is a “value differentiator in safety” for all of them, and that is very important in this highly competitive sector.
Obviously, the next step is to introduce E-RESCUE right from the start of the value chain: this means that our company must become a supplier to the industry at large, thus making the business fully scalable. However, first we must overcome two market barriers:
- approving our device for each seat model design selected for each bus model (homologation).
- publicising this radically new concept of safety device and teaching the rescue teams how to work with it.
Overcoming these barriers is the main goal of our SME PHASE 2 project.
