OREANDA-NEWS. January 12, 2010. The Accident Response System (ERA GLONASS) will become operational nationwide in 2013.

The creation of the system began in 2009, and it should become partly operational in 2012 and start working at full capacity in 2013.

The system will be able to monitor the situation on the roads and quickly respond to road accidents. It may even detect the smell of alcohol in an automobile.

A total of 180 million roubles (USD 6.02 million) will be provided from the budget for the system in 2010.

The overall cost is about two billion roubles (USD 66,985), of which 511 million roubles (USD 17.11 million) have been disbursed from the federal budget and 1.380 billion (USD 46.22 million) roubles from off-budget funds.

"This project, titled Accident Response System (ERA GLONASS), has big social importance and aims to reduce the death rate during road accidents," Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov said earlier.

According to Perminov, 56 percent of people injured in road accidents die because of untimely response of emergency services.

"If implemented, the following main results will be achieved namely time of response to road accidents by emergency services will decrease by 30 percent, the severity of injuries and casualties on the roads will be reduced, budget expenditures for the road accident rehabilitation measures will be but by about time and a half to two times," he said.

"ERA GLONASS is expected to begin to be introduced in the Russian road transport sector from 2011," Perminov said.

The system will also ensure global control over and security of hazardous and valuable cargoes, reduce the cost of navigation equipment for end consumers by organising mass production of GLONASS receivers, and improve the environmental situation by monitoring set parameters of automobile engine operation.

It will also provide the basis for building intellectual transport systems in regions, Perminov said.

He said 12 new GLONASS satellites would be launched before the end of 2010 to bring their total number in orbit to 24. In addition, three Gonets satellites will be launched by the end of 2010 to increase it to 30 satellites.

For GLONASS signals to be received continuously across Russia, the system needs at least 18 operating satellites, and 24 satellites for global coverage.

It is reported that work is underway to modernise the system. The new GLONASS-M satellites have better signal characteristics as well as a longer design life (7-8 years instead of the current 3 years).

In the future, the system should use low mass third generation GLONASS-K satellites with a guaranteed lifespan of 10 years.