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Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The
by dalben 1y ago
Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.
- scoopertrooper 1y agoWhat are the privacy concerns relating to ambulances?
- __alexs 1y agoAt least in the UK ambulance crews are extremely tightly monitored (mostly for good reasons) so surprised there would be any privacy concerns for crew on the clock.
- dalben 1y agoThe concern was related to being able to know where emergency vehicles were. If you build a system that announces to traffic light “I’m police/fire/EMS, coming through”, you also build an early warning system for criminals and terrorists who either want to avoid or target you.
- mosselman 1y agoThat doesn't make any sense. How would criminals know even if the traffic light receives a signal like that?
- ralferoo 1y agoI think these systems used RF before, so anything in the vicinity could listen in. That said, if this new system is a phone app, it'll just be using phone data instead, so it'd be hard for that to be intercepted.
- hypfer 1y agoNo, it would be _easier_ for them to intercept, because now there's a central server you need to access to know about ALL units within the country.
- tzs 1y agoIf we are assuming terrorists that can get real time access to government servers, we should assume they will access the servers used by the dispatchers and so can find out when an emergency vehicle leaves and where its destination is. That is probably more useful for planning an attack on emergency vehicles. Although why even bother with servers? Just call in a fake emergency (or cause a real emergency) at a place of your choosing, and the government will send emergency vehicles to you.
- LadyCailin 1y agoIn the US, there’s a thing called the Opticom. It’s just an extra light that is installed along with the normal light bar, and the traffic light recognizes the strobe pattern, and changes. https://www.fedsig.com/product/opticom/ https://www.fedsig.com/product/opticom/ No app required.
- Boltgolt 1y agoBut highly susceptible to unauthorized use. The app version can also alert drivers directly with an audible alert that an emergency vehicle is close by
- cadamsdotcom 1y agoFixable by taking a picture of every opticom user?
- 0_____0 1y agoOr by doing even a slight amount of encoding of the IR signal. Transmitting a single byte as a key (set by region, same as fire dept. elevator keys) would be enough to prevent people from using their TV remote controls or whatever to trip the preempt sensors. That being said, this is kind of a non-issue already, I have heard a story about someone abusing the preempt sensors like 10 years ago and never since then. Maybe there already exists an encoding scheme.
- SteveNuts 1y agoAnecdotal of course, but in my 20 years of driving I've never once seen a vehicle activate the red light override sensors that wasn't obviously a legitimate emergency vehicle. IMO a huge majority of people realize how illegal it would be to mess with these things, and the risk/reward is very low. Anyone who would take that risk would probably just run a red light instead.
- kortilla 1y ago