Story originally published by My Panhandle

SANTA ROSA BEACH, Fla. (WMBB) — South Walton Fire District officials are now using a service they say improves highway safety.

It alerts drivers that an emergency vehicle is approaching, or an emergency scene is ahead.

Authorities said it will help drivers comply with “Move Over” laws to shrink their response times.

“If vehicles get in the way of an ambulance or a fire truck or a beach safety truck as we’re on the way to an emergency, that ultimately is delaying care and the time that a patient is able to receive attention from our paramedics or lifeguards or whatever it is so you have to get out of the way and move over for emergency vehicles; other people’s lives depend on it,” South Walton Fire District Public Information Officer Mackenzie McClintock said.

The HAAS Alert: Safety Cloud system blasts an advance warning alert to drivers using different map services, or technology like CarPlay.

It gives drivers moving in the same direction as the emergency vehicles a 45-second warning to clear the way for a fire truck or ambulance.

“Unfortunately, at times there are positions or maybe loud music in a vehicle that would cause a good-meaning driver not to get out of the way in time and we don’t automatically assume that because somebody doesn’t want to get out of the way that they’re doing it on purpose,” McClintock said. “This is just to help people and to make them more aware, more situational aware, hopefully, of the scenes, and then also to protect our own folks who want to go home to their families at the end of the day.”

In March alone, the HAAS system alerted more than 4,400 drivers about 307 incidents involving a responding SWFD apparatus.