"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:38:46 +0100, Fredxx wrote:

I would recommend what3words for those circumstances. As an aside it
also integrates with SatNavs for those difficult places to find.

Lots of discussions about the problems inherent in what3words.

W3W is a great idea, but badly implemented. You'd think that they would
deliberately avoid using both singulars and plurals, or words that sound
similar to each other.

The satnav in our Honda (using Garmin software) has an emergency mode which
gives both a latitude and longitude and a description in words of the form
"On A64, near the junction with the Scotchman Lane".


All these methods of communicating your location depend on one key thing:
the emergency operator being able to make use of your location and not
asking for stupid information. When the "M1 A 123.4" emergency location
signs began to be erected on motorways and trunk roads (around 2008), I
happened to see an accident on the opposite carriageway. Other people had
stopped, but just in case no-one had phoned it in, I rang from my mobile (on
hands free). I said something like "Accident on northbound B carriageway of
M1. I'm travelling south on the A carriageway. I've just passed sign "M1 A
123.4", and the accident is on the opposite, B carriageway about 1 km north
of the sign I've just given you". I was asked for the postcode of the
address - FFS, random locations on motorways don't have postcodes. What
junction had I just passed? No idea: I was in the middle of a long journey
and all I needed to know was which junction I had to leave at, which was a
long way off. I was a bit exasperated as I pointed out that the emergency
signs were there for giving locations in an emergency and yet this person
didn't know what to do with the information. I offered to stop at a
100-metre post on the hard shoulder and read out that information - those
have been around for a lot longer, so maybe their software would know what
to do with that info. "Don't bother," I was told. "My system wouldn't know
what to do with that information either." I do hope someone had already
called in the accident and got through to someone who was better trained.

I emailed the Chief Constable of the relevant police force the following day
to alert them to a serious deficiency in training of emergency operators,
and had a very grateful response saying that he'd just listened to my phone
call and couldn't fault me on the accuracy of my information, and had
identified "an urgent need for improved training". He also set my mind at
rest that no-one had been injured (so the delay and confusion hadn't been
critical to anyone's wellbeing) as it had been a damage-only accident.

Nowadays with my smartphone with GPS I could have quoted OS grid ref, though
I'd have had to stop to do that!

I was impressed when my wife called in an accident while we were driving on
the A1 a few years ago. The emergency operator didn't need to be told where
we were and said "ah yes, I can see you've just passed the turning to Kirk
Smeaton, heading north". The phone had its GPS turned on (we were recording
a track on Viewranger) so I wonder if the location is automatically passed
to the 999 operator if GPS is enabled. It was too precise to be based on
triangulation of various in-range mobile phone masts. If he'd quoted the
location of the accident, I'd have said that someone else had phoned in
already, but he told us where we were at the time of the call, which was a
bit further north, allowing for delays in "d'you think we ought to phone
999?", finding the phone and in dialling 999.