Mercedes-Benz to speed up crash rescue with QR codes
As part of their wish to reduce car fatalities, Mercedes-Benz will be introducing new Quick Response – QR – code stickers on its vehicles starting from this year on.
A QR code is a small black and white square symbol that can be read by smartphones and tablets via a special app. The goal of the QR code, in this application, is to provide a rescue sheet for each specific vehicle it is attached to, thus offering rescue and emergency services important and necessary information about the vehicle. This information will include the location of airbags, the battery, tanks, electric cables, high-pressure cylinders, and in the case of hybrid models, where the additional batteries and high-voltage cables are located.
These stickers will be fitted to each vehicle’s fuel tank flat and on the opposite side B-pillar.
The rescue sheets already exist and have been developed by the German Automobile Association and then provided by automakers for all of their vehicles, but the inclusion of the QR code will make accessing them that much easier and faster in the field.
Each QR code will identify each specific vehicle that it is located on, and this means that rescue workers will find the relevant rescue sheet in a matter of seconds. The idea is meant to speed up rescue efforts considerably when compared to the current system of trying to find a rescue sheet inside a crashed vehicle, or in severe collisions, identifying a vehicle via a number plate and a telephone inquiry.
Mercedes-Benz said that they chose to place the QR code stickers on the fuel tank flap and on the opposite side B-pillar because very rarely does it happen for both of these parts to be badly damaged in at the same time in an accident as well as the fact that they are easily accessible from the outside.
In an interesting move, Mercedes-Benz has waived its right to patent this application so as to allow the system to be available to all car makers, thus encouraging manufacturers to continually update their own rescue sheet links and incorporate QR codes into their vehicles.
More-so, QR code stickers can also be retrofitted for models dating back to 1971.
