Avoid Smartphone to Call 911 Emergency

[Geek-9pm]

When you use a smartphone to call in an 911 emergency , you could make things worse. ABC news has criticized the 911 system last year, but this story is new and very moving. It Isa the report of the widow was wanted to save here husband.

Widow has urgent message about calling 911
Like most anyone, Alison Vroome expected her 911 call to go smoothly.
By Diane Wilson and Lindsey Brunson
Tuesday, May 03, 2016 05:27PM
CARY, NC --
The night of her husband's death, Alison Vroome did everything she thought she was supposed to. She grabbed her phone, called 911, told the operator her address.
Then she told it to her again and again.
Almost everything seemed to go wrong. The call went to a different county; the operator couldn't understand her address. It was more than 10 minutes into the 911 call before the paramedics arrived, 10 minutes of panic that dragged on for Vroome and her family, her two girls crying, the neighbors trying to resuscitate her husband, Kevin, collapsed on the bathroom floor upstairs.

How could this happen? Smartphones now are now small computers tath can track your moves almost anywhere. What went  wrong?
The core of the problem is that most 911 services can not lock into a app onm the smartphone that gives the exact location. Instead, the cell tower can only give an proximate location that can be off by a half mile. Or even more.

Read the Full Story...
A report says it would take three years to re-work the emergency system to work well with Smartphones.

[BC_Programmer]

And people make fun of me for having a landline

[anthonyb5615]

I don't see why the operator had a problem understanding the address. Should be fired, even with technology, operator should understand address and know how to locate it without any technology. I will bet and say this happen in a rural area and involved a hard to find address. Either way sad story..

[DaveLembke]

The call went to a different county; the operator couldn't understand her address.

I can see this happening for people that move or buy a cell phone plan that is in one area and dont live in that area. Brother in law bought a cell plan in Florida through some market america promo and he says he is saving so much money using that plan, meanwhile for everyone else its a long distance call to Florida even though he lives just 15 miles away in New Hampshire. I can see a mix up like that happening with his phone. The worse part of this is that he is probably only saving like $3 a month and for his mother to call him she had to have a long distance carrier and so he may be saving $3 and forcing his own mother to pay more than $3 to talk with him. A very stupid situation. His mother and sister told him to get a local number, he refuses and doesnt care that it will cost others an additional expense to contact him locally but through a florida phone number. Well if there is ever a 911 call he will likely have it going through a Florida dispatch which has no clue about the New England area, however they should be able to triangulate from towers to place it or use the phones internal gps maybe to locate it, however just like the call that geek shared it took over 10 minutes, is it worth saving $3 a month to not know if 911 will work properly and force other family members to call long distance even though he is just 15 miles away.   

[Geek-9pm]

A few observations.
•  There are some real cheap cell phones available in most metropolitan areas. One could put one of these in the truck of your car as an emergency phone.
• Some medium price tablet phones have two SIM cards. The second card could be for an area you often visit.
• in addition to 911, there are other X11 numbers that can bring up a live operator. In a frantic emergency you could try one of these to get help.
http://www.utc.wa.gov/regulatedIndustries/utilities/telcom/Pages/specialServiceNumbers.aspx

211 - Public, health.
311 - Non-emergency police, fire.
511 - Road and traffic conditions.
711 - Telecommunications Relay Service.

These may a vary.  Many phone commies use 611 for customer support.