Annual Safety Impacts
42,000 lives lost
3,000,000 Injuries
$230 billion in medical costs

Traffic
$ 6 billion in personal hours lost per year
$ 80 billion in lost wages and wasted fuel
20-30% more roads built ($280 billion ITS America)

Homeland Security
Goods monitoring
Oil dependency

Environment
Quality of living

My hat off to Chicago CIO, Hardik Bhatt (Andy) and company for creatively finding a way to move forward. With the information above and the needed services still not supporting public safety, I think we need to realistically start making some decisions. Frankly, I think there will soon be national mandates forcing cities to start using the technologies that will address these serious safety problems. Yes I said a mandate in deploying municipal wireless networks for highway safety and public security. So is municipal wireless going away? I see just the opposite.

Don’t forget the spin off benefits. Reduction in crime! Reduction in traffic! Reduction in gas consumption! Reduction in work driving time! Oh yaw, it might save my life and maybe a fireman or two! And the hidden benefits to small business that Andy stated in an interview with First Business Morning News in Chicago.

I am Director in an organization called ProjectSafety focusing on municipal wireless public safety and transportation applications. I am also a Director in an organization called SmarTown which focuses on location based advertising supporting municipal wireless applications. There seems to be recurring articles in MuniWireless.com that are repeating the same successful business models. Public safety and advertising. My organizations got it a long time ago and they keep trying to fight the good fight with other municipal wireless professionals. We get it. We just need our politicians to get it. Keep pushing forward Chicago. We are almost there.

Keep up the good work guys.

Laz