A Novel Priority-Based Ambulance-to-Traffic Light Communication for Delay Reduction in Emergency Rescue Operations

Rescue operations are very critical and sensitive. Only one-second delay could make a serious difference between life and death. Therefore, the delay in rescue operations must be reduced as much as possible. The siren signal can be used to warn other vehicles nearby the ambulance. However, it has no impact on the traffic lights, which is normally a main cause of delay in rescue operations. For this reason, many ambulances get stuck and experience long delay at the intersections, which should not happen by any means. To enhance the rescue operations, this paper proposes a novel Priority-based Ambulance-to-Traffic Light Communication (PATCom). PATCom allows information exchanging between traffic lights and ambulances in advance. This information allows the traffic lights to turn a prioritized green light on demand to allow the ambulances immediately and safely passing any intersections. Our performance evaluation result shows that PATCom remarkably achieves 68.86%, 100%, and 87.50% reduction in terms of total travelling time, stop time, and congestion time, respectively. This great achievement could save many more lives in the future.