The goal is to reduce collision risks and facilitate the state's move-over laws.
"It goes right along with Scott's Law which notifies people to get over and make way for emergency vehicles in the scenes and hopefully will protect not only us but police and everyone tow truck drivers that are on scene and emergency vehicle accidents," Zummo said.
The alerts are activated when SFD's emergency lights are in use. If you're driving and using a navigation system, you'll get the alert that there is an emergency vehicle nearby and to pull over.
The fire department said it will work on several navigation devices, including:
- Jeep
- Dodge
- Ram
- Chrysler vehicles
- Waze
- Apple Maps
"While you're driving, we'll either get this in your in-dash navigation or a lot of the more popular apps that people use Waze, Apple, some of those, they will give you notifications like you know that either you're coming to an accident scene or we happen to be coming up behind you or approaching your vehicle," Zummo said.
The Springfield Fire Department said most of their new vehicles come with this feature. Zummo said seven engines and two trucks have it ready to go now.
"This is becoming kind of a mainstay and in a lot of new apparatus that are being built around all the different manufacturers and when we were lucky enough to get the purchase of some new vehicles in the last couple of years," Zummo said.
The Springfield Fire Department thinks this new technology will significantly help reduce accidents on the roads while drivers are moving over for emergency vehicles.
