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Text Message The Police In Emergencies
from the using-your-voice-is-so-last-millennium dept
The UK is getting ready to roll out a plan that will let hearing impaired people send in an SMS text message to the police in the event of an emergency. This is instead of calling 999 (which appears to be their equivalent to the US's 911). I'm not sure why it's limited to hearing impaired people. I would imagine that such a system could be useful here (that is, if anyone in the US actually used text messaging). This is especially true since the last two times I've had to call 911, I've received the incredibly disturbing "all operators are currently busy, please stay on the line..." message. I expect to get such a message when I call Dell, but not the emergency police number. Update: The police might have to use the SMS to English translator to interpret some of those messages. Though, interestingly, someone quoted in this article points out that he doesn't think most people actually use all those famous SMS abbreviations that have become so popular.
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Both were concerning traffic incidents. The first was a car that made a (for no clear reason) sharp left turn in the middle of the highway, smashing into the median and then bouncing back into the road right in front of me.
The second was concerning a driver who appeared to be asleep (or maybe just stoned) driving on the highway. He was weaving back and forth, and as I passed him I looked over and his head was down, and it was clear he wasn't conscious.
In both cases, I never got through to the police. After about 5 minutes of waiting on hold, I just hung up.
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Laaaagggg.....
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This one time I had a big grease fire. I called 911 (it had jumped out of the pan and was spreading) to try and get the firedepartment. 5 minutes laster the fire had kinda started spreading to the living room so I hung up and put the fire out myself with a pot (running back and forth filling it with water). The thing is, if I had just gotten a busy signal I would have just hung up and put tried to put it out myself in the first place ... but the freaks told me to hold! Then when the firechief comes over the next day to congratulate me on my outstanding civi service (lol), he had the nerve to ask me why I didn't stay on the phone :-/
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