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According to the FCC and the 4 major wireless carriers TXT to 911 is going to become a reality in 2014. Has anybody here used it yet or know of anyone how has?

The top four wireless carriers in the U.S. have agreed to speed up their efforts to support text-to-911 capabilities, making it available by May 15, 2014.Text-to-911 service is currently available on a limited basis in a few areas.

WTF! Totes Crashed! LOL! Need blood n stuff. OMG!

Not surprising really, although I can't see how its very effective. Harder to find out where you are.

Only thing I see texting being useful is in emergency notification. My college's emergency notification system is both on e-mail and by text.

Plz, murder in house. cum quik.
Yeah...Im not seing this working

Because people in 911 calls, in the middle of an emergency are just as coherent, right?

Yes, we all get a big laugh about "oh wow those people and their text speak in an emergency! Those cads!" but let's be honest, with technology as it is, this could work pretty darn well. Cell phones are more and more the main phone in households now (I know my main phone has been a cell ever since I left college), and those come packed with location information. So I ask those making the cheap, easy jokes, why is this not going to work well?

They talked about this in "you're next" (awful movie, I wasted enough time on it for all of us). Made a degree of sense, I figured it was real already.

Well, I can see some coordination issues.

I think it would be easier to talk to someone in a panic situation than having them frantically type something out on a phone. If you can barely understand txt spk when someone is perfectly coherent what about when they are distraught or injured?

There is one less communication barrier if you are using speech.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, I can see some coordination issues.

I think it would be easier to talk to someone in a panic situation than having them frantically type something out on a phone. If you can barely understand txt spk when someone is perfectly coherent what about when they are distraught or injured?

Actually, I'd predict quite the opposite. Think of someone talking in a panic situation, especially if there is an injury. The dispatcher not only has to work to keep the person calm (not an easy thing) but they also have to keep them focused and coherent enough to describe things. Texting, even in text speak, has none of that auditory panicky "oh god he's bleeding" noise that you get in a 911 verbal call. It might not be perfect grammar, but I'd say there's little appreciable difference.

I really doubt anyone in a panic situation will be able to type anything legible with the speed that would be needed.

It would be faster to call.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Plz, murder in house. cum quik.
Yeah...Im not seing this working

Except this is exactly the situation in which it would actually work and be helpful...

- It gives you the ability to communicate with 911 operators without drawing attention to yourself through noise.
- If GPS information is attached to the text message it makes it even easier for 911 operators to send help your way.

Again, I'm going to have to disagree with you Grey. Let's just consider the basic information that you'd need from a 911 call:

Nature of incident
Location
Your name

In a text message, assuming location software is running, the dispatcher has the name, phone number and location immediately at hand. That's a bit of an assumption, to be sure, but even then, how big of a time difference is there in between a person talking out an address/situation and typing one out (especially given that texting is an incresingly common skill)? And this is not to consider the 'panic noise' that a person is going to be experiencing, or some of the other variables about not knowing an address and so on.

D-usa already brought up points I was going to. I'm not seeing this as a bad thing.

I don't see how it could be a draw back to have texting be an option.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I really doubt anyone in a panic situation will be able to type anything legible with the speed that would be needed.

"somebody broke in"
"man with gun in house"
"please, send help"

Have you ever been on the 911 center side of a phone call? People in a panic situation are about as useless talking on the phone as they would be texting.

It would be faster to call.

And everybody can hear you call.

I just don't see how the inherent problems with typing out a legible message will make it super useful.

I do see how it could be useful if you need to be quiet, assuming the phone is on vibrate or silent.

But if someone is needing to convey information, talking seems to me to be superior in every way to typing it out.

Are you assuming that this will be in text speak or something? Again, I fully admit that I don't text all that often, and certainly not with any hardcore text speakers, but just how much of a difference is there?

 Grey Templar wrote:
I just don't see how the inherent problems with typing out a legible message will make it super useful.

The situations where you would need to text are situations where you don't need that much information. Again a simple "somebody is breaking into the house" is really all you need.

I also think that you are letting your status as a "not-teenager" cloud your judgement of the ability of texting to convey information accurately and quickly.

I do see how it could be useful if you need to be quiet, assuming the phone is on vibrate or silent.

And you don't talk. Which is also quiet.

But if someone is needing to convey information, talking seems to me to be superior in every way to typing it out.

Except while the child is hiding under the bed or in the closed with the bad guy standing 3 feet away not knowing that the child is in the house...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I don't think that texting will ever replace calling 911 in a realistic fashion.

I do think that there are situations where being able to text instead of having to call and physically speak could save a life.

Yes I am. And yes there is a huge difference.

I can sort of read it but its not very easy.

And since there will likely be spelling errors even with the text speak you'll end up with a garbled mess.

Lets assume the following message.

hlp some gys are brekng in 2 my hose.

You can sort of understand it.

But lets assume that some letters are mistyped.

"ilp snme gzs are brfkng in 2 mx hope"

That's what the message could read if you hit the key one or two pushes off of what you meant to type. A few changes and the message is impossible to read at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:


I do think that there are situations where being able to text instead of having to call and physically speak could save a life.

I can agree with that, I just think it will be very rare for it to happen.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Lets assume the following message.

hlp some gys are brekng in 2 my hose.

You can sort of understand it.

But lets assume that some letters are mistyped.

"ilp snme gzs are brfkng in 2 mx hope"

That's what the message could read if you hit the key one or two pushes off of what you meant to type. A few changes and the message is impossible to read at all.

Let me weight in on that argument from the perspective as somebody that has spent a long time in the 911 environment and share what the process would be if that exact same thing happens on a regular phone call:

Location:

1) If somebody calls 911 the location information of the call is automatically transmitted to the 911 call center. The ideal situation is that it's a landline, so by the simple act of calling you would already initiate the 911 response because it would show up at the call center as
[d-usa phone#] [d-usa address]. Just by calling form a landline, without saying a single word, the 911 center already has my call back number and the physical location for the emergency. At this point they could already start to send help.
2) Landlines are getting less and less common. The majority of people use cellphones now. 911 call centers are getting better at being able to translate that information into a physical location, but its still not perfect. But if the technology is in place and everything goes well, you can call 911 from your cellphone and without saying a word the 911 center would have your location as well (sometimes it's a crappy "somewhere in this area" and sometimes its a "somewhere within x feet of this location").

Nature of the Emergency:

1.1) If you call 911 and say "I need an ambulance" they will send an ambulance. If you say "somebody is breaking into the house" they will send the police. if you say "my house is on fire" they will send the fire department.
1.2) If you call 911 and had a stroke and say "laaslijabsdgkljansdlkgjbalskjdbgalksjdbglwaeuhaselkjlkjbbjsgagdf" they will send the police and an ambulance because they don't have a clue what is going on but it's clear that somebody is in trouble or they wouldn't have called.
1.3) If you call 911 and don't say anything (stroke, somebody is in the house and you can't talk) they will send the police (and possibly an ambulance) for a welfare check.
1.4) If you hangup they can try to call back, but there is no way to track your location if you are moved.

2.1) If you text 911 and say "hlp some gys are brekng in 2 my hose" they will send the police.
2.2) If you text 911 and say "ilp snme gzs are brfkng in 2 mx hope" they should send the police and an ambulance because they don't have a clue what is going on but it's clear that somebody is in trouble or they wouldn't have texted.
2.3) shouldn't be a problem since you can be quiet.
2.4) If you quit responding they can continue to try to track the location of your phone since it's not a landline.

I understand the concern of "it can be harder to get reliable and clear information via speech than text" and it's a valid statement. But 911 operators are already facing the same issue with actual telephone calls and they are trained to deal with it. There are many cases where a physical phone call would give the same crappy and useless information as a text filled with spelling errors: medical emergency keeping you from being able to talk (stroke, injury, diabetic emergencies) and there are protocols in place to handle a 911 call where you cannot understand what the caller is saying. It's also no different than having a 3 year old call 911 and giving you answers that are on the same level as some of the crappy phone-posts I see on Dakka.

Your points are valid, and I can understand why they concern you. But I've worked in that particular environment and they are not really new problems and they are not really that much different from the same problems that exist via speech and that we already have protocols for.

 d-usa wrote:


I do think that there are situations where being able to text instead of having to call and physically speak could save a life.

I can agree with that, I just think it will be very rare for it to happen.

Other scenarios where texting 911 can be very helpful:

-A "lost hiker" type of situation: Texting 911 will preserve your battery a lot longer than calling 911 and the text would include the same location information in the data that a phone call would have.
-Bad reception: you can send out a text with barely any cellular connection, but you wouldn't be able to call.
-Massive emergency: Boston Bombing, Katrina, Superstorm Sandy. A common problem is that when everybody calls on their cellphone (not just 911, but just using their cellphone) in a massive emergency the system can be overloaded and nobody can actually get through to call 911. Texting is much less data intensive and can be more reliable in a situation like that.

There are times where my phone will not make a phone call but can successfully send a text.

Also, texts will queue up and send as soon as a signal is available without having to dial over and over again, unlike a call.

It's meant to complement, not replace, existing options.

Yeah, texting won't REPLACE calling. It's an additive that has occasional benefits. If you aren't seeing that, you have terrible tunnel vision and no amount of fact will convince you. Does 911 expect you to text instead of call? No. They're giving you an alternative if you can't. More options in an emergency setting is ALWAYS a good thing.