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Once fitted to a car, the radar would be used to prevent or mitigate collisions by applying the brakes when an object appears in the path. This could be used to help prevent shunting when parking in tight spots as well as performing emergency stops when driving down the road.

The EU hopes that the technology will help to halve road accident victims by 2010.

The problem for legislators was finding a suitable frequency for radar as all available frequencies throughout the EU are in use. In particular the Commission was worried about possible interference with mobile phones, radio telescopes and police radar. In the end CEPT, the Conférence Européenne des Administrations des Postes et Télécommunications, opted for Europe's first large scale roll out of UWB which, whilst it might use existing frequencies, is low powered and works at only very short distances.

The 24GHz frequency band has been allocated for the use of in-car radar until 2013. After that date the assumption is that the adoption of in-car short range radar will have grown to the extent that other wireless services may be affected. Therefore new car radars will be switched to 79GHz.