Illinois State Police launch notification system to reduce car crashes involving emergency vehicles
On Wednesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois State Police announced a new notification system to help reduce the number of crashes caused when drivers fail to move over for emergency vehicles with flashing lights.
The state police and the Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology partnered with Google Public Sector to develop a GPS-based alert system to inform drivers of Illinois State Police traffic activity, urging them to slow down and move over.
In 2017, the state passed Scott’s Law, also known as the “Move-Over” law, which requires drivers approaching stationary emergency vehicles with flashing lights to “move over” and slow down to give first responders room on heavy traffic or high-speed traffic roads.
Despite the mandate, two Illinois State Police troopers have been killed, nine seriously injured, and 51 others injured in crashes since 2019, according to the a state police data dashboard.
“The men and women of the Illinois State Police provide an invaluable service in keeping our highways safe, and we owe them every possible effort to ensure that safety is extended to them as well,” Pritzker said in a press release about the advanced warning application. “The tragic accidents that have injured and killed Illinois State Police officers cannot become an expected hazard of the job. Illinois drivers—slow down, pay attention, and help our law enforcement officers stay safe while they save lives.”
In addition to sharing responding officers’ GPS coordinates, the state police will also generate messages about crashes, traffic stops and motorists receiving assistance. Those messages will first be sent to Google Cloud then pushed to Waze, the route-finding mobile app, to notify nearby drivers. The state said it also plans soon to integrate with Google Maps.
“Too many Illinois State Police officers have been killed or injured in ‘Move Over’ crashes,” Brendan Kelly, director of the state police, said in a news release. ‘The advanced warning gives people time to slow down and move over, reducing the risk of a crash for both drivers and troopers.”
This isn’t the first time state and local governments have used navigation technology to help solve traffic issues.
In 2019, Waze made its anonymized data available to dozens of cities through Google Cloud, with the goal of making curbside management, roadway maintenance and transit investment easier for small to midsize cities that don’t have the resources to invest in enterprise data-analytics platforms of their own.
That same year, New York City used Waze to install Bluetooth-enabled beacons that allow drivers to maintain GPS signals while traveling through a tunnel.
