Skip to footer

How Mercedes aims to help first responders with smart-phone tech

Mercedes has taken on the initiative of equipping vehicles with scannable tech as a way of allowing first responders at accidents to analyze details of the very car they're responding to. It's part of the German automaker's push to equip all new vehicles with so-called QR codes.

|
Gene J. Puskar/AP/File
A Mercedes logo is shown on a car at the 2013 Pittsburgh Auto Show in Pittsburgh. Mercedes has fit QR codes – badges containing data that can be scanned with smart phones – as standard to all new vehicles since the end of 2013
  • By Antony Ingram Guest blogger

For most of us, QR codes are just a quick way of getting extra details from an advertisement or transferring clients from a business card to a website. They're useful, but hardly life-changing. Those fitted to the latest Mercedes-Benz models--and now able to be retrofitted to the last few decades of Mercedes and Smart cars--could very well be life-changing. The German automaker has taken on the initiative of fitting QR codes to vehicles as a way of allowing first responders at accidents to analyze details of the very car they're responding to.

In the event of an accident where rescue workers may be required to free occupants, the danger levels are high for all involved. Time is of the essence and extractor crews may not be fully aware of the intricacies of the vehicles they're dealing with. Using a QR code system, rescue workers are able to access information on the very vehicle they're responding to--with safety information and technical details just a scan away. 

Mercedes has fit QR codes as standard to all new vehicles since the end of 2013 and will do the same for Smart Fortwo models from this month. The codes are located in two places around the vehicle--inside the fuel filler flap, and on the car's B-pillar. Accident investigators have deemed these two areas the most suitable and most accessible in most accidents, and only in very rare cases are both areas seriously damaged, potentially rendering the codes unreadable.

Best of all, the codes won't be limited to brand new vehicles. Daimler has revealed that Mercedes and Smart models going back to 1990 will be covered as retro-fit options. In many cases, it'll be entirely free--and customers can head to their local Mercedes or Smart center to have the codes fitted.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to How Mercedes aims to help first responders with smart-phone tech
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0107/How-Mercedes-aims-to-help-first-responders-with-smart-phone-tech
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe