Why and When to Buy Emergency Vehicle Preemption (EVP)
Every second counts when crises strike, and decisive action is a must. Firefighters, medics, police officers, and other first responders must get to the scene of an emergency quickly and safely. Often driving through congested intersections—or taking alternate routes just to avoid known congested areas—they rely on effective response strategies to ensure they arrive safely where they are needed most. Their ability to reach the scene swiftly can make the difference between life and death, containing or escalating damage, and overall community resilience.
The effectiveness of emergency vehicle preemption systems is directly linked to the safety and well-being of any community. Intersections—critical junctions of urban infrastructure—often become a significant hurdle for emergency vehicles. Without a reliable solution to prioritize their movement at traffic signals, response times are unnecessarily extended, putting lives and property at risk. Studies have demonstrated that reducing the time emergency vehicles spend navigating intersections can decrease the number of collisions and improve the overall effectiveness of emergency responses.
Historically, emergency vehicle preemption systems have depended heavily on hardware like infrared emitters and receivers that operate on a disjointed, signal-by-signal basis installed at intersections. While innovative at their inception, these systems now show their age. They are expensive to maintain and prone to failures that can result in critical delays. Their hardware is less secure from cyberattacks, and recurrent systems and vehicle updates often don’t integrate well with the newer infrastructure. A preemption system that works inconsistently undermines its primary purpose and potentially leads to increased risks and decreased trust from first responders.
Technological progress presents a significant opportunity to reform and modernize existing outdated systems. Cloud-based EVP systems offer a modern approach, addressing the limitations of their hardware-based predecessors. These systems leverage high-frequency location data and utilize industry-standard communication protocols to streamline preemption. Rather than relying on a piecemeal signal-by-signal approach, these modern solutions offer a unified, bird’s-eye view of traffic and emergency vehicle interactions, helping clear out more intersections ahead of time and increasing traffic safety.
Cloud-based systems can deliver more accurate and dependable preemptive capabilities by integrating automatic vehicle location data, dispatch data, and traffic signal operations. These systems ensure emergency vehicles move through intersections with minimal delay, optimizing response times and enhancing safety for all road users.
Because of the cloud-based nature of modern solutions and by leveraging AI, machine learning, and access to real-time data, next-gen EVP solutions are continuously learning and becoming smarter with future releases and software updates included.
EVP implementation should be 100% software-defined. A significant disadvantage for traditional EVPs is that equipment must be installed in the vehicles and at every intersection. This equipment can be costly and requires complex and constant maintenance since it’s exposed to the elements daily. If any problem is encountered, cloud-based software solutions can be quickly rebooted, minimizing service disruption to the community.
A next-gen EVP enables preemption citywide using the existing CAD/AVL system and networked traffic signals. It can be installed and activated from any Traffic Management Center (TMC) in days without additional field hardware, site visits, or surveys. Updates are automatically pushed through to keep solutions at optimal performance.
Line-of-sight systems often activate the green light for first responder vehicles when they are already too close to the intersection due to geo-fence bounding boxes, tall buildings, turning corners, weather, and other factors. This doesn’t allow the existing traffic to be cleared from the intersection before the vehicle arrives, thus causing delays and unnecessary congestion. Next-gen EVP solutions allow traffic to be cleared away well before a vehicle arrives at the intersection.
Hardware solutions are more prone to facing cybersecurity attacks—compromising an entire city traffic signal system. Hacker threats, outdated security practices, and unpatched systems are gateways for potential disruptions. Cloud security systems offer more secure advantages than traditional EVP systems with centralized security protocols, cloud DDoS protection, advanced encryption methods, and reduced hardware dependency.