The Evansville Fire Department (EFD) wants to make city streets safer. The department is currently in the testing phase of its Traffic Preemption Project.
Firefighters pack into Engine 1 as the truck gets ready to roll out of the station. It’s one of five EFD trucks currently testing three different traffic preemption devices. These tiny machines change traffic signals to give the truck a green light as it approaches an intersection.
The traffic preemption system only works on a few streets, but Engine 1 Captain Bryan Will says the device has already made driving safer and decreased response times.
"We’ve started to make it to scenes, where a lot of the time we would be second on scene, now we’re first on scene," Will says.
City council voted Monday to pay for the project's engineering costs, which come to $400,000. Assistant Fire Chief Paul Anslinger says these devices will practically pay for themselves.
"We pulled our records for the last seven years," Anslinger says. "Honestly, the amount of damage that was caused to firetrucks due to negligent drivers, those costs alone would’ve paid for the engineering fees."
The estimated cost of the entire project is $4.4 million. The fire department says the vast majority of the money, almost 100 percent, will come from federal grants.
Anslinger says federal dollars will reimburse 90 percent of what the city pays for engineering and design. Grants will pay for the other $4 million.