While ambulances, fire trucks and road construction crews are supposed to keep the public safe, sometimes they are the victim of accidents themselves. Too often, a driver might not see an ambulance speeding through a red light or a road construction worker may be struck by a vehicle. Roadside accidents happen, but they could happen less with the right technology.
Chicago-based startup HAAS Alert has built technology that provides vehicle fleets with real-time digital safety alerts. Drivers see these alerts through their vehicle systems, and are warned when they are approaching a work zone, emergency vehicle and so on. This technology is used by a wide array of service vehicles, from fire trucks to ambulances, police vehicles, tow trucks, garbage trucks, school buses and more.
On Monday, HAAS Alert announced that it raised $5 million in an investment round. R^2 and Blu Ventures led the round, with participation from TechNexus, Stacked Capital, UrbanUs, Techstars, Ride Ventures and Gramercy Fund.
HAAS Alert plans to use this funding to expand its Safety Cloud product across the country. Safety Cloud uses cellular-based sensors and predictive technology to send alerts to drivers when an emergency vehicle activates their lights, when a vehicle is approaching a work zone and so on. Thousands of vehicles across more than 750 organizations use Safety Cloud, which altogether have sent over 1 billion driver alerts.
The company hopes to use this new funding to reach over 10 billion driver alerts sent by 2022.
“We’re celebrating the start of an exciting new chapter at HAAS Alert, with the goal of connecting vehicles everywhere for roadway safety,” the company’s CEO and founder Cory Hohs said in a statement. “We’ll continue to measure our success the same way we always have: by the trust of our customers, and the value of the safety services we can deliver.”
