A digital alerting system is a crucial part of connected vehicle safety technology. Connected vehicle technology refers to equipment, applications, or systems that use vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications to address safety. Digital alerts are electronic notifications sent directly to drivers in lifesaving ways that they cannot miss. The partnership between digital alerting and connected vehicles is a crucial part of the future of roadway safety.

HAAS Alert leverages digital alerting to enable emergency and road maintenance vehicles to broadcast digital alerts to keep all roadway users safe. These notifications inform drivers that there is a nearby or upcoming roadway hazard and they need to slow down and move over.

HAAS Alert sends digital alerts up to 30 seconds in advance through its flagship platform, Safety Cloud®. These extra moments allow drivers more time to take appropriate action to provide a critical layer of protection for emergency personnel and roadway workers. Digital alerting aids drivers earlier in making safer, smarter driving decisions, making it a key component of connected vehicle safety. 

The state of roadway safety 

Drivers on the road are more distracted than ever. The temptation to scroll through texts and social media on phones is always there. Gear shifts and in-vehicle infotainment centers have become more intricate and distracting. Cars have become increasingly soundproof. Some vehicles boast sound-deadening underbody shields or installing active noise-cancellation solutions that make it difficult to hear emergency vehicles' sirens. 

The more distracted drivers become, the more first responders and roadway workers are at risk. Every year, tens of thousands of collisions occur between civilian drivers and police or fire vehicles. In 2017, 15,000+ fire department vehicles in the US were involved in collisions. Incidents such as these can lead to tragedy. For example, up to 25 percent of annual line-of-duty firefighter fatalities are attributed to motor vehicle crashes. Similarly, nearly 30 percent of law enforcement officer deaths in the last decade were traffic-related. 

In addition to the insurmountable tragedy collisions like these incur, they also cost money. The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) calculates that the average cost of a fatal collision involving a regular citizen is $11.2 million. This breakdown includes the average cost of emergency services, medical services, lost wages and fringe benefits, household productivity loss, insurance processing, workplace costs, legal costs, and congestion impacts. 

While a human life is undoubtedly worth more than an emergency apparatus, incidents like these have ripple effects. Replacing a single firetruck can cost its community millions. Draining resources to repair that truck leads to less emergency apparatus on the road — that means less resources for keeping the community safe. It all contributes to a dangerous cycle that demonstrates that civilians and emergency personnel deserve safer and more connected roads. 

How Move Over laws support safer roads 

The first Move Over law was enacted in South Carolina in 1996 after a paramedic was struck by a passing vehicle and was found to be at fault. These laws require drivers to slow down and move over to allow safe clearance to emergency personnel, roadside workers, and other incidents and hazards on the road. Every state has implemented some form of Move Over laws between 2001 - 2012. 

States are continuing to improve Move Over laws to make them more effective to this day. These efforts are driven by driven responders and safety leaders looking to increase awareness and adherence to these laws. Some expansions have included increased fines, and harsher penalties, stronger efforts in community education, and broader definitions for the vehicles and incidents that drivers should slow down and move over for.

However, challenges still persist. For example, in Delaware, drivers encountering an active emergency vehicle are required to move a lane not adjacent to the vehicle and reduce speed, while drivers in the same scenario in South Dakota are simply asked to reduce their speed.

These discrepancies create an uncertain and sometimes chaotic environment for emergency responders and all roadway users. As a result, while Move Over laws are a crucial part of first responder and roadway worker safety, they’re not always enough to save lives.

Modern, connected vehicles offer many distractions to drivers. But they have one key advantage. Compatible connected vehicles are able to receive lifesaving digital alerts. Digital alert systems are a crucial part of connected vehicle safety and has the power to better protect all roadway users.

Digital alerting systems are a vital part of connected vehicle safety

Connected vehicles are powered by vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication — digital alerting is a form of V2X. The more connected vehicles receive digital alerting, the safer those cars and roadways in general will become. 

What is V2X?

V2X is the ability for a vehicle to communicate with the world around it. Vehicles send and receive data with things on the road that they encounter with help from this technology. Cars connected through V2X become part of an interactive network that includes other vehicles (V2V), infrastructure (V2I), pedestrians (V2P), and other network connections (V2N). 

V2X technology provides connected vehicles and assets with real-time information that can unlock completely new capabilities, functions, and solutions for all roadway users. These capabilities are not reliant or attached to any particular type of technology, communication method, or data type. Most vehicles today come with some form of connectivity, meaning they come standard with some level of V2X communication.

Why does V2X matter? 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) further predicts that V2X will drastically enhance safety measures, by potentially reducing crashes by 615,000 a year. This is possible because V2X helps connected vehicles continuously keep tabs on its surrounding environment. Drivers are alerted in advance to potential hazards, traffic conditions, and other hazards they might not notice until the last second. V2X offers the following invaluable benefits to all roadway users:

• Improved safety: NHTSA predicts that connected vehicle technology like V2X has the potential to address around 80 percent of crash scenarios involving non-impaired drivers. Drivers are able to be alerted to imminent crash situations, such as a merging truck ahead or a vehicle suddenly braking. Connected vehicles can communicate with roadside infrastructure, meaning they can be alerted to upcoming school zones or if a traffic light is about to change.
• Improved mobility: Drivers spend a lot of time in traffic. In 2022, the average U.S. motorist spent 51 hours sitting in traffic. Connected vehicle technology like V2X enables drivers and transportation system operators to make smart choices to reduce travel delay. As this technology makes its way into forms of transit, like buses and trains, it can help travelers have a realistic idea of when transit vehicles will arrive to make public transportation more appealing and efficient. 
• Improved environment: Connected vehicle technology could give drivers the real-time information they need to make more eco-friendly transportation choices. Real-time information about traffic conditions can help motorists eliminate unnecessary stops and let their vehicles reach optimal fuel-efficiency. 

HAAS Alert is driving connected vehicle safety and V2X forward through Safety Cloud® digital alerting. For years emergency vehicles, work zone equipment, school buses, and specialty vehicles have relied on analog alerting tools to warn drivers of their presence so that they can slow down and move over. A V2X platform like Safety Cloud enables those vehicles to enhance their traditional alerting tools so they can reach drivers quicker and more effectively.

Safety Cloud digital alerts are the future of connected vehicle safety

Safety Cloud digital alerts from HAAS Alert reduce the risk of collision by delivering advanced electronic notifications to nearby and approaching vehicles. These notifications alert drivers of a nearby emergency responder, work zone, or other roadway hazard, prompting drivers to slow down and move over. Alerts are sent up  to 30 seconds before drivers come into contact with a hazard in the road. These crucial moments allow drivers more time to take appropriate action.

Digital alert systems like Safety Cloud have proven results. In 2013, the University of Minnesota conducted a study to test the effectiveness of digital alerting. Researchers found that when a driver receives advanced warning of an emergency vehicle in the area, there is a 90 percent reduction in the likelihood of collision between those two vehicles. 

Similarly, Purdue University published a study in 2021 to measure the impact of digital alerting-equipped queue warning trucks on hard-braking events. The researchers’ goal was to discover if warning drivers of upcoming work zones earlier through digital alerting would reduce hard braking events on highways. 

Researchers used 19 queue trucks equipped with Safety Cloud digital alerts. After 3 months of research and 370 hours worth of observation, the study determined that queue trucks with digital alerting decreased hard braking events by 80 percent. 

Digital alerts improve collision avoidance for all roadway users

Safety Cloud, the leading digital alerting platform, offers two alerting services — Responder-to-Vehicle (R2V™) and Responder-to-Responder (R2R®).

R2V alerts are electronic notifications sent from emergency or roadside personnel vehicles straight to a civilian motorist. These alerts protect any public safety, utility, maintenance, towing, and municipal government crew. R2R alerts notify emergency responders when other Safety Cloud-equipped emergency vehicles are in active response mode and approaching the same intersection.

R2V alerting

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The Columbus Fire Department, which is the 14th largest in the nation, saw real results with R2V alerts. In the spring of 2023, the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) received a grant to install Safety Cloud by HAAS Alert. That grant allowed COTA to gift Safety Cloud to Columbus Fire.

In the year after implementing Safety Cloud, the department experienced a 15 percent reduction in struck-by collisions. In that same time period, they noted that units across the city saw about a 7-second reduction rate in response time. Nearly every Battalion Chief vehicle reduced its response time, with one vehicle in the fleet reducing its response time by 73 seconds.

Civilian drivers receive alerts up to 30 seconds in advance in ways they cannot miss, such as through leading navigation apps and select in-vehicle infotainment centers. Columbus Fire Department’s research proves these alerts are effective enough to keep firefighters safe on the job.

R2R alerting

Collisions with civilian drivers are a looming threat to first responders, but so are those with other responding apparatus. First responders must travel at high speeds when responding to an emergency. Other local agencies with responding units will also be traveling at equally high speeds. When responding units are quickly approaching the same intersection, there’s a high risk for a collision between those vehicles.

Emergency service vehicle incidents (ESVIs), including collisions and struck-by incidents involving first responders, are the second leading cause of US firefighter fatalities. Responder-to-Responder ESVIs, although less frequent, still pose a very real risk to responders.

Between 2019 - 2020, HAAS Alert partnered with NHTSA and D.C. Fire and Emergency Services to demonstrate the benefits of digital alerting to public safety agencies. The project sought to improve collision prevention between fire apparatus and civilian vehicles, along with aiming to reduce the collision risk between emergency fleets responding to the same incident.

Over the testing period, 84 EMS and fire vehicles were equipped with Safety Cloud. Those apparatus sent out 633,592 alerts. After the data was analyzed, the results were clear — 95 percent of the time, first responders who receive an R2R alert will begin to slow down their speed.

See what digital alerting can do for your fleet

Digital alerts are more than electronic notifications. The technology ingests and disseminates roadway safety data between stakeholders and users in a way that enables a wide variety of V2X use cases and applications. The more that V2X technology becomes, the better connected vehicles will be protected.

Improved connected vehicle safety leads to better protected first responders. When people in those positions are injured on the job, the entire community suffers. Safety Cloud digital alerts are the answer to keep everyone safer on the road. 

Get your copy of the Safety Cloud Guide to learn what digital alerting can do for your fleet. Learn about our integration partners, explore features, and hear stories from real-life Safety Cloud customers.