Emergency
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Solutions
S fety
Solutions
Updated: Nov 6, 2024
When it comes to your car being disabled on the side of the road and waiting for roadside assistance, our smart cars can become pretty stupid fast.
Cars these days are so much smarter than they were even 10 years ago. They’re crammed with tech, screens, amazing sound systems, and advanced driver assistance that can even include hands-free driving.
But some of our cars systems are ancient. Old school hazard lights—blinkers that flash when a car is disabled on the side of the road—were invented over 70 years ago and have barely been touched since.
This story is 100% human researched and written based on actual first-person knowledge, extensive experience and expertise on the subject of cars and trucks. No AI was used.
Pop on those hazards, find your roadside safety kit, call AAA or 911 and then… you’re kind of on your own, and that can be a super dangerous situation.
Getting out of the car is dangerous; you might get hit by an oncoming car or truck as you exit the car. Staying in the car can be equally dangerous; cars are often hit by oncoming traffic.
This type of incident is so prevalent, in fact, that 1 person is killed or injured in just such a situation every 5 minutes.
Read: ESS Strives to Make Roadside Crashes a Thing of the Past
This week, Volkswagen announced that the company will roll out the H.E.L.P., or Hazard Enhanced Location Protocol, a roadside assistance and alert system. The brainchild of Emergency Safety Solutions, H.E.L.P. is a blueprint to changing how we alert other drivers as well as emergency response agencies.
ESS paired brighter emergency lights with an automatic notification system and rolled out the beta test with Tesla; it’s been in action in nearly all of Tesla’s 1.5 million cars on road in North America.
Now, Volkswagen will integrate H.E.L.P. and road awareness collision avoidance alerts into its Car-Net suite of connected vehicle services.
Read: How to Have a Flat Tire and Not Ruin Your Day – Starting With Roadside Assistance
The H.E.L.P. protocol adds enhanced hazard lights make a disabled car more visible to traffic. Then, the system uses cellular-vehicle-to-everything, or C-V2X, technology to notify roadside assistance, emergency response systems and other drivers who have H.E.L.P. in their cars.
VW is rolling this out the H.E.L.P. system in its 2024 and 2025 vehicles. The system is activated manually by turning on the hazard lights, say in the case of a flat tire. Or, automatically in the case of airbag deployment.
Read: Think New Cars Aren’t Affordable? Volkswagen Begs To Diffe: 2025 VW Jetta
Thats because as a VW driver you’ll get alerts of other cars disabled on the side of the road. VW’s Road Awareness Alerts provide drivers with in-dash notifications when approaching a disabled vehicle, of a wrong way driver, a stationary emergency vehicle, moving emergency vehicles, and roadside assistance ahead.
Eventually, ESS hopes, every car on the road will be able to utilize cellular-vehicle-to-everything technology to alert roadside assistance and emergency response systems around it, from first responders such as police on the road, to other cars and trucks on the road. Everyone should get a notification there’s a disabled car nearby so they can slow down and avoid a tragedy.
You know the button: It’s typically on the upper console next to the sunglasses holder. You might have accidentally punched it and freaked out a bit, wondering what would happen. If you did actually reach someone, you probably talked to a very nice 911 operator.
What that nice operator can’t do is tell where you are. The H.E.L.P. system skips that often help-delaying step and informs emergency services of your location.
With H.E.L.P., VW drivers will get access to emergency assistance from the Volkswagen Response Center through the built-in SOS button and a secure cellular connection for emergency help on the road. The system can auto-locate your position so the tow truck or police can find you quickly and easily.
The auto industry has been talking about connected cars for a while, with the idea of connecting them to traffic lights, live maps, the cloud, the crowd and other systems for more efficient driving.
But VW’s investment in H.E.L.P. and connected vehicle-to-everything technology is a leap-frog move that makes our vehicles safer. CV2X simply gets the message across in real time, which will save lives.
VW drivers are the lucky first to ones have instant access to the most advanced emergency system around. But if you want a system like this in your car—for yourself, your teen, your mom—don’t fret; ESS is working with Stellantis, maker of Jeep, Dodge, Ram, Chrysler and others, as well as multiple other automakers to incorporate the system in future vehicles.
And, they’re working on aftermarket solutions to allow older cars to implement H.E.L.P. the same way you’d add a dashcam or Apple CarPlay: easily.
So, H.E.L.P. really is on the way!
