Detroit Fire Department uses new tech that turns traffic lights green as EMS vehicles approach

DETROIT (FOX 2) - During an emergency, every second counts and, unfortunately, not everyone pays attention to flashing lights and sirens. That’s why the Detroit Fire Department is testing out new technology that can turn traffic lights green as EMS vehicles approach the intersection.

Detroit Fire Department teams up with Miovision 

Big picture view:

Out at Michigan Central, DFD teamed up with a company called Miovision for this 90-day pilot program. Take a look at the video because you want to see us in that fire truck. For now, only a few trucks and intersections around Corktown are outfitted with the technology.

It’s wireless and automatic, so basically the trucks send a signal to the traffic light as they approach, and once you’re a couple of hundred feet away, the light will either stay green or turn green.

DFD is testing out this new technology. You can see the light is green right there. It should stay green. Here comes the fire truck, and it’s going, and look at that, the light is still green for them. So it appears to work.

What they're saying:

"The big deal is the response time and the quicker we can get there. If it’s green, and we have the traffic already stopped, that gives us the extra seconds to maybe save a life," said Chief David Nelson.

"The goal is to make sure those lights are always 90% accurate, and we want to have more data blueprints so we can scale in a much more confident way," said Chief Technology Officer Shobhit Jain.

What happens after the 90 days? 

Dig deeper:

DFD will look at the results and provide feedback. If they do want to adopt this technology, it already works with the infrastructure of the traffic lights in Detroit, they’d just need to do some programming.

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