SARASOTA, Fla. — 911 dispatchers in Sarasota have started working with new technology to help locate vehicles involved in a crash.
People with GM's OnStar and other similar services can now rest assured that first responders will be able to find and get to them quickly during an emergency, especially in a remote, low-connectivity area.
The Sarasota County Public Safety Communications Center has been brought on stream with the Rapid Deploy Radius Mapping partnership that links vehicles in Onstar's system to help find drivers.
The center utilizes technology aimed at reducing the time it takes to process an emergency call and more precisely locate the emergency.
Some of the new technology adds more layers of location accuracy by pinging precise locations through a mobile phone when a user has signed up for GM's OnStar service, even if they are unable to make the call themselves.
"If you were to be in an accident, let's say somewhere on Myakka and nobody saw the accident and you're unconscious and you can't call. We will be notified that you won't sit there for too long," Sally Lawrence, a 911 Coordinator for Sarasota County, said.
It's an added layer of safety for drivers with services like OnStar who have been relying on the system's own Emergency Advisors who act as middlemen to connect drivers involved in a crash with the nearest emergency response team.
The new technology also provides responders with more accurate coordinates and details so they're able to find the emergency faster and provide life-saving assistance.
"We're getting crash data from OnStar. Before the phone call is connected to the Emergency Service Network, we are being notified that the call is coming into 911," Michael Speigel, the Sarasota County 911 operations manager, said.
"We're Crowd-sourcing data without any interaction of humans," Lawrence said.
Dispatch operators can also get text messages, foreign language translations, native data from a victim's phone, and approximations for the height or topography of a crash location.
"So if you're on multiple levels of a building we will be able to tell to data from the phone from the phone," he added.
With the volume of emergency calls up by about 8% after a jump from 298,000 calls in 2022 to 300,000 calls last year, county officials said this upgrade would free up the operator as quickly as possible.
"Without them having to hang on the phone and ask people questions and questions and questions. It makes it so that the next emergency can be handled by the operator," Lawrence said.
The technology also provides dispatchers with access to publicly available street cameras so they have a view of emergency scenes to help advise first responders where necessary. This works on similar services for Mercedes Benz models. The company that makes the technology is also working on options for Teslas and other smart cars.
Along with being the primary answering point for all 911 calls for Sarasota County, the Sarasota County Public Safety Communications Center also provides full as well as backup support communication services for 11 area emergency response agencies including law enforcement and fire rescue in other nearby counties.