Emergency services Vehicle-to-Vehicle Digital Alerting

highdef

The link below brings you to and RTÉ news report about a new fire engine in Carlow that has a much lower carbon footprint however what really interested me was the line about "Vehicle-to-Vehicle Digital Alerting, which signals other road users to the presence of a fire appliance attending an emergency, providing them with more time to slow down, move over and avoid the scene."

https://www.rte.ie/news/leinster/2024/0828/1467038-carlow-fire-station/

This system (or at least something similar) is already in place in the USA and the Waze app has the feature built in to allow drivers to be advanced up to 30 seconds in advance of an emergency service vehicle interaction -

https://www.waze.com/en/wazeforcities/casestudies/keeping-streets-safer-one-alert-at-a-time/

Will be interesting if this is the same sort of technology and if so, if it will be rolled out nationwide.

AndrewJRenko

What would this achieve that lights and siren would not achieve?

highdef

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122553847#Comment_122553847

An example would be if an emergency service vehicle was approaching a junction with blue lights but has not yet activated the siren, drivers on the side roads especially would benefit.

Another example would be if someone is playing loud music in the car and is unable to hear a siren in a timely manner. I understand that you should be able to hear a siren if an emergency services vehicle is close by but some people have higher priorities and are more interested in their personal entertainment when driving, rather than to be astute to the surroundings at all times.

A third example would be if someone is just a non-attentive driver (Ireland has LOTS of those) and requires every bit of extra assistance possible to drive in the least careless manner.

If a person is driving and is hard of hearing, additional visual cues would likely to be very helpful.

Yet another example would be a combination of two or even three of the above examples.

And finally, there are plenty of other scenarios where the Vehicle-to-Vehicle Digital Alerting system would achieve things in a more timely manner than blue lights and/or sirens and I've no doubt others will list some here.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122553847#Comment_122553847

Good for ambulances transporting patients who would be negatively impaced by lights/sirens.

Great for residents in surrounding streets at 3am: many blue light vehicles choose not to use sirens in some streets.

Good for guards who don't want you announce their arrivalahead of time.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122553891#Comment_122553891

Apart from people with hearing loss, they honestly seem like fairly flimsy benefits. I'm not sure we should be planning to deal with inattentive drivers by putting more information on the big distracting screen on the dash.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122554273#Comment_122554273

These benefits would seem to depend on critical mass - emergency drivers would need to know that most/all drivers will get this digital alert before they could rely on it.