Utica Fire and EMS launches technology that sends alerts into your vehicles

Drivers send texts with handheld phones, fix their makeup in the rearview mirror and wolf down sandwiches. What they don’t do, Ben Brown noticed, is watch for oncoming emergency vehicles.

Brown is fire chief in Utica. He decided his firefighters and emergency medical technicians needed a better way to get the attention of distracted motorists who don’t keep their eyes and ears trained on the oscillating lights and sirens.

The Utica Fire Protection District recently installed devices by a company called HAAS Alert. With the technology now installed, all that first responders have to do is hit the emergency lights and, boom, a warning signal goes to nearby satellite-navigation screens and to apps such as Waze.

“The growing number of distracted drivers is huge,” Brown said. “We’ll be standing on the side of the road, and you can see distracted drivers almost hitting other cars.

“We’re trying to think of ways to slow them down and make them more alert before they come up on us at a high speed.”

Brown isn’t sure whether it will work – “We haven’t seen it in action yet” – but the technology cost Utica Fire and EMS Services $2,500, and Brown said that’s a small price to avoid even a single crash.

The HAAS Alert platform is called Safety Cloud, and it’s a digital alerting service that enables emergency vehicles and other road hazards to deliver in-vehicle alerts to approaching drivers through in-vehicle screens and navigation applications.

“Compared to traditional lights and sirens, digital alerts have been shown to reduce the likelihood of a collision by up to 90% by giving drivers much more time to reach upcoming hazards,” said Brock Aun, vice president of communications and public policy for HAAS Alert. “Our alerts are received by drivers up to 30 seconds in advance of a hazard so that they can safely navigate by the hazard in compliance with ‘Slow down’ and ‘Move over’ laws.”

Firefighter Cody Dittle wired the devices into all of Utica’s fire trucks and ambulances.

He said he’s been impressed with HAAS’ interactive features. The devices track the vehicle movements and collect an impressive array of data that Dittle can retrieve, which can be funneled back to the station in the form of monthly reports.

“I was playing with it a little bit the other day,” Dittle said, “and there are files that you can export that give us even more data that I haven’t even begun to go through.”

Utica became aware of HAAS Alert about two years ago at a Fire Department Instructor Conference in Indianapolis. The idea of dispatching signals to dashboard screens and smartphones had some obvious merit, and Brown took home some literature to give the matter more study.

Brown was doubly intrigued because the Utica Fire Protection District covers more than 90 square miles and covers diverse roads including freeways, country roads and state parks, where visitors are absorbed by the sandstone cliffs rather than what’s behind them.

To date, Utica has had many close calls but no collisions when the lights are activated.

“We have never had another vehicle hit us on a call,” Brown said, although there once was a no-injury crash that occurred during a patient transfer.