Move over! Two map apps to notify drivers when state police are stopped ahead
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The Illinois State Police is using Waze and Google Maps to alert drivers in real time about roadside personnel in an effort to cut down on injuries.
The state police in Illinois are launching new tech tools that they hope will help drivers steer clear of troopers working along the side of the road, Gov. JB Pritzker announced this week.
The Illinois State Police will be one of the first agencies in the country to provide real-time information to Waze and Google Maps to alert drivers to roadside personnel. They launched the partnership as a way to reduce the number of “move over” crashes, which injured 60 and killed two troopers since 2019.
“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 statement. “The tragic accidents that have injured and killed Illinois State Police officers cannot become an expected hazard of the job.”
Illinois law already requires drivers to slow down and change lanes when they see stopped emergency vehicles, highway maintenance vehicles with flashing lights or any other vehicles with their hazard lights on.
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said he hopes that when drivers see the icon pop up on their apps, that they’ll remember it represents a person whose life is at stake.
“In the nearly six years since I’ve been director of the Illinois State Police, I’ve been to way too many hospitals across the state. I stood by way too many hospital beds. I cried and prayed with way too many families and spoke at way too many funerals, in part because of life-altering and sometimes deadly crashes that violated the Move Over law,” he said at a press conference.
Under the new system, the state police agency will generate messages about the GIS coordinates of crashes, traffic stops, motorist assistance or debris in the roadway. The agency will pass that along to Google’s cloud service. Waze will then distribute that information to drivers using its app. Google Maps will start sharing those alerts in the coming weeks.
Kelly said the extra information wouldn’t be considered when charging motorists with violating the Move Over law. “This is not in any way a factor in determining our enforcement,” he said. “This is really designed to be prevention.”
In fact, the app could help them avoid a citation, Kelly added. “We want them to obey the law. We want them to slow down and move over,” he said. “When they obey this law, the driver is safer and our troopers, other first responders, firefighters, EMTs, workers out there on the road, they’re all safer.”
For now, though, the alerts in Illinois are only issued when a state trooper is on the scene, not local law enforcement or paramedics.
Kelly said he hopes other navigation apps will be able to use the same information, but the state started with Google because the company was willing and able to roll out the features. “We hope this becomes the standard,” he said. “This should be the way it’s done on every app people are using when they’re driving. We hope this is something that is not just used by the state of Illinois but is something that can be used across the country. We’re not the only state that is dealing with this very difficult public safety challenge.”
Not all efforts to get the attention of drivers for safety purposes have gone as planned. Many states, for example, use humorous messages on dynamic signs to encourage drivers to slow down or wear their seat belts, but the Federal Highway Administration recently recommended that transportation agencies avoid the use of humor or pop culture references that could distract drivers.
Melaney Arnold, a spokesperson for the Illinois State Police, said the agency “has not conducted research specific to in-car notifications outside the fundamental knowledge that most people pay more attention and slow down/move over when alerted [that] an officer is ahead.”
Daniel C. Vock is a senior reporter for Route Fifty based in Washington, D.C.
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