Posted on 08/09/2014 4:59:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
Have you ever been frustrated with using your GPS system on your phone or in your car and found that the accuracy was often a block or more off? Or worse, in rural areas the streets may not even be shown at all. It might surprise you to learn that the 911 tracking system used by first responders to find people who are in the midst of a dire emergency may be even more inaccurate. Attempts to improve the 911 system to ensure that people needing emergency attention from police, fire or other first responders can be located quickly are being delayed rather than expedited!
Public safety officials say this 911 location problem is widespread, particularly in densely populated urban areas and sparsely populated rural communities. Perhaps the answer lies in quickly getting to the suburbs when an emergency strikes...IF you want 911 to find you!
If you're outdoors, and your phone's GPS chip can connect with satellites above or the phone hits a series of cell towers on the ground, the 911 operator can determine your latitude and longitude (within 50 meters or so) most of the time.
But make that emergency call from inside a building, where it's hard for your phone to "see" the satellites and cell signals tend to bounce around a lot, then your location information could be off by 100 meters or more. That 100 meter difference can be enough to direct responders to the wrong building, and certainly to the wrong floor. In rural areas with spotty cell service the location process may be even more difficult.
That's why the first piece of information 911 operators request from a cellphone caller is their location. But what happens if the caller doesn’t know, or can’t communicate, their location? What happens if the call gets dropped? When seconds count, the minutes or hours of delay may be the difference between life and death.
Calling from a landline alerts the 911 operators to a specific location, but cell phones are a different story…and the problem is only going to get worse. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that more than 70 percent of all calls to 911 centers now come from wireless phones — that's more than 400,000 calls a day. The majority of these calls (64 percent) are made indoors. And these numbers are sure to go up as people continue to pull the plug on their land-line phone service at home.
The FCC has heard the complaints and the horror stories of people dying before 911 responders can find them. The agency has acknowledged the potential threat to public safety. In fact, in a speech last year, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said that "if you call 911 from a wireless phone indoors, cross your fingers, because FCC location standards for emergency calls do not apply indoors."
The FCC has proposed rules to require more accurate location information for emergency wireless calls made indoors: accurate within 50 meters of the phone 67 percent of the time within two years, and 80 percent of the time in five years. The rules would also require vertical location information—for those in multiple-story building — within three years.
So how many lives are at stake? The FCC has stated that these improvements could save approximately 10,000 lives each year. That’s 10,000 parents, grandparents, children, neighbors and friends.
With this kind of problem, and the technology to solve it, we would expect that the issue would be addressed with a sense of urgency, right? In fact, a number of public safety and health organizations are supporting the FCC rules that have been proposed to beef up 911 cell response accuracy, including the National Association of EMTs, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council and others. Unfortunately, the cell phone industry is balking at the rules and seeking delays in the implementation of the requirements for more accuracy.
Victims of inaccurate responses to 911 calls are growing with each day. Those who have suffered from the current flawed locator system understand the need for speed in improving the technology that can and will save lives. The rest of us, who may be future victims, or who may have family or friends who could fall into that category, need to speak up now and demand immediate action from our members of Congress to fix a problem that has already resulted in the loss of too many lives.
Even 911 was pretty new and only used for real emergencies.
What did people do when McDonalds ran out of McNuggets?
I kinda wish that the government DID NOT have a tracking device tethered to me...but maybe that’s just me.
—yep—that sounds about like “ assaults, rapes, etc., etc., against women increase by umpty hundred percent Super Bowl Day”——
Well remember thirty years ago there were approx. 75 million less people in the USA. Most areas didn't have a dedicated Emergency service except in large population centers. And lifeflight helos were mostly a dream.
Now with these expanded emergency services available to more and more areas and newer trauma protocols it is possible to save the lives of people who would've been deemed to0 far gone 30 years ago because a trauma center was too far away. Now it actually does make a difference if you shave 5 more minutes off of the time an ambulance or lifeflight can get to the patient. More times than not "time" is the difference in saving a trauma case's life. (My Mom was an EMT for 15 plus years...)
An argument for right to carry especially in dense cities.
I'd prefer one that only activated when you called 911. Otherwise, it ain't nobody's business but my own.
“I’d prefer one that only activated when you called 911. Otherwise, it ain’t nobody’s business but my own.”
They’d hit you up with the excuse (probably true too) that in many situations you can have cell phone coverage, but not GPS coverage.
I’d be happy with an “OFF” switch for GPS...but even then, how can one trust it, without removing the battery.
Anyone who uses 911 for something like that should be fined heavily financially
I was 4 wheeling in the San Isabel national forest a couple weeks ago. My Windows phone not only showed the “road” we were on, but the satellite view of the area. It was within 10 feet at all times. I had no idea that the trail had a name, or was on a map.
Just for fun, take a look at your cell phone bill and your land-line phone bill. Now, add up all the taxes you pay on those lines. It’s staggering. In my household I pay about $50 every month in federal and state taxes on just my phone lines!
How does one know the number could be more could be less.
But I do know that people who call for help in an emergency. They Do not a lot of times give good directions well hang up after saying I need help yell and scream at the dispatcher for not getting there fast enough.
While not listening while the dispatcher is trying find out where they are at.
Or say something like I live on the Smith farm every one knows where the smith farm is when a smith hasn’t live there for 30 years.
Or I live on River road when there are 3 of them in the area then hang up.
A good dispatcher well try very hard to get good directions but a lot of times the people who are calling in are not very help full.
As noted GPS is not the end all for locating a location.
Hard to pull that off in North Dakota. A satellite in space is usually closer and/or a better contact than the nearest tower, especially if you're on AT&T.
North Dakota is an exception...but I was thinking more about people in buildings or especially homes, since most are not hard-wired now.
Well you want all of those unproductive people to have phones don’t you?
It wouldn’t surprise me if there were that many and more. Here, many years ago, they changed all the rural route road to county number roads to accomodate the new 911 system. It made no sense since they are still arbituary numbered roads at the taxpayers’ expense. With the old rural route you knew which part of the county the emergency was in. The problem with the renamed 911 roads the ambulance may go to the opposite side of the county. If you call, you have to tell them you’re on CR 437 that is on the south side of the county off FM 8322 near the Shell station because CR 436 and CR 438 are on the north side of the county 45 miles away. It’s easier and more timely to take yourself to the ER especially if the hospital in the nearby county is closer. With 911 regulations, EMS can’t cross county lines so you must be taken to the hospital in your county which may be 45 minutes away rather than the one in the next county that’s only 5 minutes away.
Yeah no joke. You always had to indicate your location to get someone to come to you, that is nothing new.
Does the FCC think they can just mandate tighter location standards and the technology will magically appear on the FCC’s timetable? How arrogant and naive of them.
There are way more lives saved now because of cellphones. Thirty years ago you had to find a phone when something happened. Now somebody on the scene can probably communicate.
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