While they are pivotal figures in our communities, the state of firefighter safety on the road is in a precarious place. Firefighters are required to rush into burning buildings, which is an inherent risk of the job. But a lot of citizens might not realize that the risk for firefighters begins on the road. 

When a vehicle crashes or an emergency incident occurs on the side of the road, local firefighters are called to the scene. Sometimes they're the first, and maybe even only, emergency responders present. As Responder Safety says, when a fire truck arrives on scene, it will commonly be parked as a warning and as a barrier for the first line of defense against oncoming traffic. 

While it's a necessary act, a fire engine is designed to carry and transport the tools, equipment, and personnel needed to extinguish fires, and rescue people from dangerous situations. It's not built to stop tractor-trailer trucks or cars from colliding with it at highway speeds. 

When those apparatus get struck by a speeding vehicle, the lives of firefighters at the incident scene are put in grave danger. Crew members can be injured or even killed. If a fire engine is damaged in a collision, it must then be taken out of service and repaired or replaced at a great cost to the department and the community.

Risk is synonymous with being a firefighter. However, they face some risks that are completely avoidable. Firefighters put their lives on the line to keep the community safe — they deserve that same level of protection on the road. 

Firefighter life safety initiatives

Responding on the road is undeniably a frightening experience for firefighters. In response to this risk, major fire service constituencies at the 2004 Firefighter Safety Summit developed a number of life safety initiatives in response to this ongoing risk and the emerging safety culture in the US fire service. 

These initiatives are part of the Everyone Goes Home program, founded by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF). It aims to reduce the number of preventable injuries and deaths for firefighters. These initiatives are deeply ingrained in departments around the country: 

• Cultural cultural change: Change starts with the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the fire department. Advocate the need for a safety cultural change within a fire department that includes leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility. 
• Accountability: Enhance the personal and department accountability for health and safety of every person in the department. Turning a blind eye to unsafe behaviors should never be accepted. 
• Risk management: Firefighters understand the risks of their jobs, but the same injuries, accidents, and fatalities should not keep happening. Focus attention on risk and incident at all levels, including strategic, tactical and planning responsibilities.
• Empowerment: Ensure that all firefighters are empowered to speak up regarding personal and organizational safety, which can lead to the end of unsafe practices.
• Training and certification: Develop and implement national standards for training, qualifications, and certification/recertification that are equally applicable to all firefighters based on their individual duties. This is an attempt to tie training to a reduction in firefighter injuries and deaths.
• Medical and physical fitness: Firefighters must have the correct tools and information to improve their health. Develop and execute national medical and physical fitness standards that are applicable to all firefighters, based on their individual duties.
• Research agenda: Create a national research agenda and data collection system that ties back to the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives. The results of this research must be transferred and implemented at the local levels.
• Fatality and near miss investigation: While the National Fire Protection Association always reports on how many firefighters die in the line of duty, those numbers are always believed to be an underestimate. Because of that, all firefighter fatalities, injuries, and near-misses should be thoroughly investigated.
• Grant support: Seek out grant programs that support the implementation of safe practices and procedures and/or mandate department safe practices as an eligibility requirement.
• Response policies: Develop and champion national standards for emergency response policies and procedures. This minimum set of activities should be universally recognized and understood to assure life safety at every fire.
• Violent incident response: Create and execute national protocols for response to violent incidents. This will help the fire service understand how and where firefighters can be injured and demonstrates the need for the development of national protocols to address this.
• Psychological support: Provide all firefighters and their families access to counseling and psychological support whenever it's needed. This is including but not limited to issues regarding family, finances, and even drug/alcohol issues.
• Public education: Public education should receive more resources and be championed as a critical fire and life safety program. Placing an emphasis on public education can help transfer and implement at the local levels to raise fire prevention to the level of other department operations.
• Code enforcement and sprinklers: Strengthen advocacy for the enforcement of codes and the installation of home fire sprinklers. This can help decrease the number and severity of structural and residential fires to keep our firefighters safer.
• Apparatus design and safety: All apparatus and equipment should be designed with safety in mind because no firefighter should die in the line-of-duty due to apparatus or equipment-related issues.
• Technology: Utilize any and all available technology when it can help to create higher levels of health and safety among firefighters. Technology within the fire service is gaining traction, but there is still work to be done.

All of these initiatives are of equal importance, but emerging technology is presenting itself to be one of the easiest and most effective ways to keep firefighters safe on the road. One piece of technology in particular stands out from the pack — digital alerting systems. 

How digital alerts protect firefighters on the road

A digital alerting system is an electronic notification sent directly to a driver. Any alerting vehicle or asset can be equipped with this technology. These notifications inform drivers that there is a nearby or upcoming roadway hazard and they need to slow down and move over.

Digital alerting systems have been proven to reduce the risk of collision by 90 percent, compared to traditional lights alone. These emergency vehicle alert systems aid drivers earlier in making safer, smarter driving decisions. This makes digital alerting a key component of roadway safety. 

Why digital alerting systems matter

Digital alerts were created to help improve Move Over law compliance, as these regulations were designed to prevent road collisions. 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. Digital alerts provide motorists with audible and visual warnings that can help them avoid collisions and safely follow their state’s Move Over laws — and they’ve been proven to work. 

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. 

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. These studies show that when drivers receive advanced warning from digital alerting systems, they'll have more than enough time to move over and prevent near misses.

Safety Cloud® by HAAS Alert is the leading digital alerting service. It is an advanced collision prevention service that sends real-time digital alerts from emergency vehicles to drivers and connected cars via vehicle dashboards and infotainment systems, and navigation applications. 

How is a digital alert different from emergency vehicle preemption?

Emergency vehicle preemption (EVP) technology was created to help first responders on the scene faster and safer. EVP solutions give responding units a green light on their approach to an intersection while providing a red light to conflicting approaches. These vehicles are given the ability to communicate with traffic lights through a piece of hardware or direct integrations. 

EVP is a lifesaving technology, just like digital alerting. Since vehicles equipped with EVP have the power to change traffic lights, it greatly reduces the chance of emergency vehicle-related collisions at intersections. 

While they do have similarities and can both keep firefighters safe on the road, digital alerting and EVP are not the same thing. Digital alerting on its own has nothing to do with traffic lights. Emergency vehicles equipped with a digital alerting system like Safety Cloud communicate with other vehicles on the road instead of traffic lights. When an emergency vehicle broadcasts a digital alert, it simply notifies nearby drivers to temporarily slow down and move over, instead of stopping for a red light.

Despite their differences, there is a use case for EVP and digital alerting to come together as a cutting-edge vehicle-to-everything solution. Take the partnership between HAAS Alert and LYT.emergency. LYT activates green lights for equipped fire trucks and Safety Cloud notifies civilian drivers when there's an emergency vehicle nearby. This integration provides emergency vehicles with the best of both worlds — emergency vehicles can alert drivers of their presence while activating green lights en route to an emergency situation.

How does digital alerting help real fire departments?

Over 3,300 agencies and departments use Safety Cloud digital alerting to keep their crew safe. Take a look at what some of them have to say.

Mount Laurel Fire Department

Mount Laurel Fire Department Deputy Chief Larry Fox is a staunch believer in Vision Zero, an initiative with the goal to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. Once his department came across Safety Cloud digital alerting, he decided implementing it for his fleet was a no brainer. 

Larry held on to this belief even after his crew was involved in a struck-by collision.

Incidents like that just speak to how important these early warning systems are to get the message to drivers to move over,” said Larry. “For fire departments, it takes upwards of two years to get a vehicle delivered from the time that it’s ordered. We need to prevent crashes so our services can be maintained in the community."

Irondale Fire Department 

In early 2019, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) issued a safety alert to its members in response to an alarming spike in motorist crashes with emergency vehicles responding to calls. This struck close to home for the Irondale Fire Department, as they’ve had a number of near misses with motorists on the road. 

The department knew there had to be more ways to protect firefighters on the road. As they were already equipped with Cradlepoint’s 4G LTE solution, they were able to work with HAAS Alert to activate Safety Cloud through their existing platform. The Safety Cloud-Cradlepoint integration gave the department confidence that motorists were receiving accurate and real time alerts when firefighters were actively responding to incidents in the area. 

Columbus Fire Department 

The Columbus Fire Department, which is the 14th largest in the nation, implemented Safety Cloud digital alerting after the spring of 2023. In the year after implementation, Columbus Fire experienced a 15 percent reduction in struck-by collisions. In that same time period, 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.

Digital alerting reduces risk of collision for firefighters 

The state of firefighter safety on the road is in a tricky place. While fighting fires comes with inherent risk, the dangers that these brave emergency responders face start on the road. When they have to respond to crashes or medical emergencies on the side of the road, firefighters are constantly at risk for struck-by collisions. 

The Everyone Goes Home program created a number of firefighter life safety initiatives. One of the most cost-effective and immediate initiatives that can better protect firefighters on the road is technology solutions like digital alerting.

When responding or on-scene fire apparatus can alert the motoring public to their presence, drivers will have more time to take action to give firefighters the clearance they need to safely do their jobs. With that extra space, everyone will go home safely at the end of each day. Check out the Safety Cloud for Fire guide to learn more about what digital alerting can do for your fleet.