Ever experience the sense of happiness and satisfaction that comes from doing a good deed for someone? Maybe you helped someone across the street or picked up groceries for a relative in need. Soon after and maybe for the rest of the day, you felt really good.

Well that is pretty much how we felt (and still feel!) when we found out that the Woodbridge Township Ambulance and Rescue Squad (WTARS) of Woodbridge, New Jersey uses TomTom GPS devices to do their job!

It’s no secret that EMS professionals need to be able to quickly locate the person in need because in order to provide adequate treatment, timing is critical. For the Woodbridge crew, they turned to TomTom GPS units to help them stay on track and save lives. Recently, they purchased TomTom GO 720 devices for each of their duty ambulances.

“WTARS provides emergency services, utilizing paid staff and volunteers, for the Woodbridge, Iselin, Sewaren, and Hopelawn sections that make up part of Woodbridge Township. We also provide mutual aid to the other sections in the township, as well as several surrounding communities” stated Bob Ponik, Insurance Director.
Before using the TomTom devices, the organization used manually entered instructions to each street, with the headquarters as a starting point. Unfortunately as time passed, the directions became less and less effective – especially if a crew left one site to immediately go to another.

“WTARS answers over 6500 calls per year and our vehicles drive over 100,000 miles per year” Bob said “Using the GPS unit makes it very easy for every driver to locate an address. We use the FM transmitter to broadcast the directions over the stereo, because with the radios and sirens on during a run we would not be able to hear the GPS internal speaker.”

Here at TomTom we are just absolutely thankful that we can help in the community with such important tasks. We look forward to continue seeing how others make use of the TomTom devices – not only for the benefit of themselves, but for others as well, just like the great crew at WTARS!

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