The llinois State Police and the Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology announced last month that they are introducing a GPS technology that will warn drivers of emergency vehicles on the road. The technology is aimed to promote Scott’s Law or the “Move Over Law” which requires Illinois drivers to o slow down and change lanes when approaching stationary emergency vehicles, including law enforcement, highway maintenance vehicles with flashing lights in use and any other stationary vehicle with its hazard lights activated.
The GPS technology called, HAAS Alert, will allow Illinois state police to send safety alerts to some Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, RAM and Volkswagen vehicles. The alerts will notify drivers of the vehicles of state police activity ahead of them on the road and that hey need to slow down and move over. The digital alerts are delivered via navigation apps and vehicle infotainment systems.
The partnership with HAAS Alert builds on a state police partnership with Google Public Sector and Move Over crash alerts in Waze and Google Maps, expanding real-time, GPS-based alerts to more drivers, according to state police. Through the alert system, Illinois State Police compiles information about a crash or other potential traffic hazard and sends it to HAAS Alert, which distributes it to select vehicles via Safety Cloud. Drivers approaching the noted location will see a police icon and an alert to slow down and move over, according to state police.
This is an impressive technological development by the Illinois State Police. We have seen over the last 10 to 15 years how technology, specifically smart phones, can distract drivers and lead to traffic accidents. Here, the state police are using technology to their advantage and giving drivers fair warning that there are issues on the road ahead of them. It will provide them the opportunity to slow down and pull over to the other lane. This will hopefully lead to less traffic accident, but also protect first responders from the dangers of oncoming traffic. This was the whole purpose of Scott’s law.
If you or a lvoed one has been seriously injured in a Chicago car crash or Chicago traffic accident, then call Illinois accident attorneys at the Bryant Law Group for a free legal consultation at 312-614-1076 or go to the firm’s website at www.blgchicago.com.