CLEVELAND — The Ohio Department of Transportation and the City of Cleveland are hoping several seven-figure federal grants will help reduce vehicle crashes and response times by first responders.

What You Need To Know

  • The U.S. Department of Transportation granted the Ohio Department of Transportation $2 million
  • The money will be used on work to mitigate, address and report accidents in Ohio
  • The DOT also granted the City of Cleveland nearly $2 million
  • That money will be used to update traffic lights throughout the city

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, announced the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) discretionary grant program has awarded the Ohio Department of Transportation a $2 million grant to address and report vehicle crashes throughout Ohio.

ODOT plans to use data on Ohio roads collected from a program to help improve roadway conditions. That data includes traffic speeds, vehicles crashes, and weather conditions.

“[The program] will take all that data and be able to predict when crashes might occur or where crashes might occur,” said Breanna Badanes, a spokesperson for DriveOhio, a sector of ODOT working on this project. “[The program] will then send ODOT an alert so we can maybe go active take a proactive action, like lowering speed limits, or adjusting some signal timing to reduce the risk of crashes.”

Badanes said ODOT and DriveOhio will also use the grant money to develop a new airbag deployment system. When an air bag is deployed, vehicle manufactures will send ODOT an alert which will then be automatically sent to first responders, helping them respond quicker to emergencies.

Meanwhile, a nearly $2 million dollar federal grant, separate from the one ODOT is receiving, will help update traffic lights in Cleveland.

The new lights will give emergency vehicles the right of way, hoping to save more lives.

“We have to start thinking beyond engineering,” said Badanes. “[We have to think about] how we can leverage technology.”