Hacker News Reader

Comment by jvdvegt | Hacker News Reader

I suppose such system is mandatory in a car when it's sold, such after sales changes would be fine as safety is not directly impacted. Source: my daily drive is a car without a modem on European roads, no problem.

View on HN

All modifications to the car (in most, if not all EU countries) need to be homologated (eg. approved) by the authorities. So yes, removing eCall from a modern vehicle is (legally speaking) a lot different than driving one that came without it.

Obviously, that's a nice theory but as we both know in practice there's a lot of modified cars on the roads in all kinds of way and they pass their annual inspections fine - even insurers cover them as long as you disclose the modification.

Well, safety is impacted, but it seems to be up to you. If you want to go down like _a real man_ because your car couldn't call emergency services that's your choice. Other people might (hopefully) make another choice.

Well thats a choice right? We dont NEED these systems, its just mandated by governments. Just like here in spain they changed from emergency triangles that you need to put on the street to a little crappy light you put ontop of the car. That light will do nothing in sunny spain or if your car happened to stop after a curve. Its stupid crap mandated by governments to make it look like they are actually doing something new, but they forget about basic stuff. Same thing with this call system, its my car so my choice. If they want to take my car apart to figure out that i disabled it, then go ahead. I'll just pull the plug the moment you force me to plug it back in.

> If they want to take my car apart to figure out that i disabled it, then go ahead. I'll just pull the plug the moment you force me to plug it back in.

Be that stupid if you want to. But rest assured that insurance companies will always try to get their money back or not pay at all if something has happened. If they find out that you tampered with your eCall system and if they can somehow link some damage to that, you will be held liable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com