ATX Obtains French Certification for In-Vehicle SOS System

DUSSELDORF, Germany -

ATX Group, one of the leading providers of customized, connected vehicle (telematics) services to the global automotive industry, announced today it and BMW France have obtained certification from the French Interior Ministry to provide ATX’s emergency notification and response, or eCall, service. The service is standard in most models of BMW in France.

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Vehicles activated with the BMW Assist service provided by ATX use satellite location technology to pinpoint the location of a vehicle whenever airbags are deployed after a crash or when the motorist presses an in-vehicle SOS button to summon help. The transmission of the location data is accompanied by an automatic phone call from the vehicle to the telematics response center. The telematics center then integrates that information with crash and sensor data used to help indicate accident severity to emergency responders as well as information on file at ATX about the customer and the vehicle. After determining an emergency truly exists, the telematics center then uses its proprietary database of emergency responders to identify the agency with jurisdiction at the site of the emergency and transmits information via voice.

The value of the Assist service is that it provides emergency responders with a swifter notification of an emergency, an exact location of the emergency, an accurate description of the vehicle involved and information on the nature of the accident and potential injuries.

Originally introduced in Germany, ATX has assisted BMW in recent years in expanding the coverage area of its location-based, in-vehicle emergency notification service to include not only France, but also Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Andorra, San Marino and Monaco.

ATX is one of the largest providers of in-vehicle emergency notification and response service, serving over 1 million subscribers in North America and Europe and helping guide emergency responders to more than 10,000 in-vehicle emergencies every year. The company first introduced the service in 1996.

ABOUT ATX:

With operations in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Dusseldorf, Germany, ATX (www.atxg.com) is one of the world’s leading providers of customized telematics services to global automobile manufacturers. ATX services, among the first to be launched in the consumer vehicle market back in 1996, are provided to vehicle owners through the brand names of its customers: Toyota, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Maybach, and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.

Services by ATX provide enhanced safety, security and driving convenience to vehicle owners, and include location-specific emergency and roadside assistance, automatic collision notification, stolen vehicle recovery, remote diagnostics, and real-time traffic and navigation assistance. ATX also customizes services to help automobile manufacturers and their affiliated dealerships use telematics data and multiple customer contact channels to reduce costs, enhance vehicle servicing, and more closely manage customer relationships and contacts with the vehicle through its lifetime. ATX is a division of Cross Country Automotive Services (www.crosscountry-auto.com), a leading provider of location-based automotive services.

Source: ATX Group

Gary Wallace, Vice President, Corporate Relations of ATX Group, +1-800-511-5891 or +1-972-753-6230, gwallace at atxg.com. Logo: https://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090303/ATXLOGO