The communication between smart vehicles could reduce the number of accidents with death outcomes (in 2006 more then 42.000 accidents with death scenario), reduction of the number of injured persons in traffic (1.6 million in 2006) and over 7500 kilometers of vehicles trapped in congestion.

Today's Commission decision is a decisive step towards meeting the European goal of reducing road accidents. Getting critical messages through quickly and accurately is a must for road safety, said Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner. We should also keep in mind that with 24% of Europeans' driving time spent in traffic jams the costs caused by congestion could reach €80 billion by 2010. So clearly saving time through smart vehicles communications systems means saving money.

Today's Commission Decision provides a single EU-wide frequency band that can be used for immediate and reliable communication between cars, and between cars and roadside infrastructure. It is 30 MHz of spectrum in the 5.9 Gigahertz (GHz) band which will be allocated within the next six months by national authorities across Europe to road safety applications, without barring other services already in place (such as radio amateur services).
 
A typical example is the case of a vehicle detecting a slippery patch on a road: if it is equipped with a cooperative car-to-car communication device, it can deliver this information – thanks to the 5.9 GHz band – to all cars located nearby. If a traffic management centre needs to inform drivers about a sudden road closure, the alternative route to take or speed limits, it will also be able to send this information to a transmitter detector along the respective road, which then passes it on to the vehicles driving by.
 
Today's decision is an example of successful cooperation in Europe to establish conditions for interoperability and cross-border use of car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication. It will facilitate the development and testing of road safety related applications in the EU by providing a common and long term spectrum access to the automotive industry and road operators.