© 2017 IEEE. Roadway safety is a serious public health issue. Vehicle crashes on the roads and highways cost loss of lives and damages to properties. Technology exists today to help identify and respond quickly to crashes, which is specially critical in rural areas. A feature that enables a car to warn its driver against an eminent crash or to recommend the proper speed based on traffic and weather conditions is much needed in todays Internet of Things (IoT) era. Connected Vehicle (CV) technologies are contributing towards fulfilling this need. In this paper, we present a safety driving system through a cooperative hazard awareness and avoidance (CHAA) system based on V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) and V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) communications. Our approach is based on DSRC-based V2V communications. It aims to alert drivers and recommend the proper speeds for vehicles that are approaching a hazardous zone due, for instance, to low visibility conditions. We also validate the proposed hazard alert and speed recommender system under various scenarios through simulations using the iTetris platform and SUMO simulator and we demonstrate its outperformance, compared to a regular environment, in terms of risk reduction and road safety efficiency. To this end, we have adapted iTetris by updating some of its existing features (like the Geo-broadcast routing capability) which is another contribution of this paper.