Conclusion
Communities across the country are striving to provide the highest possible levels of fire/rescue, EMS, and police services. These efforts have gained new meaning as towns, cities, counties, states, and regions improve emergency response in support of homeland security and disaster preparedness.
EVP is one item in the toolkit that improves the responsiveness of public safety services. EVP has the potential to:
- Reduce the potential for an EV to be in a crash en-route to the emergency scene or to the hospital, reducing liability and keeping EVs in service.
- Help to get fire/rescue and EMS apparatus to the scene quickly and to put law enforcement in a tactically advantageous position.
- Reduce emergency medical service response time and patient transport time, saving critical minutes and increasing the chance of survival for the cardiac arrest or trauma patient.
- Be a cost-effective alternative to building new stations by increasing the effective service radius of current facilities.
- Be a catalyst for developing broader cooperation between jurisdictions as they develop or further mutual aid agreements as part of regional emergency response plans.
- Provide the foundation for transit signal priority when deployed on key transit corridors.
- Most signals are rarely preempted and those that are near EV points of origin and destination experience delays that are in line with those experienced in normal peak hour conditions.
- Signal timing plans are generally reestablished in one to three cycles after an EV preemption event.
- Public awareness grows quickly and complaints about the system decrease.