BEACHWOOD, Ohio — A community in Northeast Ohio is taking safety to an all-new level. A new way to improve response times and keep emergency crews and the community safe has recently been introduced in Beachwood.
“If we save one life because we saved 10 seconds on getting to a scene, then it’s well worth the cost of this system,” said Beachwood Mayor Justin Berns.
They’re hopeful this technology will keep everyone alive when handling emergencies.
“Basically, there’s something in the car that when the lights and sirens are activated, it automatically changes the light to green, so you see a ‘sea of green’ when you’re driving through Beachwood in a patrol car, and you have your lights and sirens on,” said Beachwood Police Chief Katherine McLaughlin.
Before this installment, Chief Katherine McLaughlin says their officers didn’t have issues responding to emergencies.
This technology just made it faster and more convenient for patrol cars and fire trucks, especially when there’s a lot of congestion and traffic at different intersections.
“We have 14,000, give or take, residents here in Beachwood, but with all the organizations and the mall and different businesses that we have here throughout the city, we can have about 100,000 people within the city on a given day,” said McLaughlin.
McLaughlin says there is a way for the technology to detect when there are police and fire crews with their lights on, but they’re stuck between cars at a busy stop.
“It does have the technology to be able to turn that off and cycle back to the regular cycle so that way if an officer is sitting at an intersection, it’s not that it’s just going to stay green for that officer,” said McLaughlin.
While this project costs the city a total of $600,000, or $60,000 a year for ten years, Mayor Justin Berns says it’s well worth the investment.
“I was a volunteer firefighter for the city for 12 years starting back in 1992, so I know the difficulties of traversing the city of Beachwood and getting through the intersections,” said Berns. “So, our safety forces being able to navigate and get through our intersections at a timely manner is important.”
Berns is hopeful this state-of-the-art technology will keep other incidents from arising.
“What we don’t want to do is be on our way to an emergency situation and cause another situation because that’s going to take away time from where we were headed to,” said Berns.
The mayor also wants to serve as an example for other communities to follow.
“We want to have the best facilities; we want to have the best equipment so that people want to work here, and they want to go home at the end of each day,” said Berns.
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