

9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/27/9-1-1-should-never-give-me-a-busy-signal/

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mediaman
Isn't this a major opportunity for a centralized, scaled outsource provider to
deliver 911 service to municipalities who sign up for it at a lower cost and
better rate of service than would otherwise be possible?

Imagine an advanced call center with 500 employees. The center can afford
sophisticated technology such as geographic point identification of the call,
bucketing multiple calls about the same incident, maybe even things like voice
stress detection. And because of the size and geographic diversity, spikes in
certain areas could easily be handled because they would make little impact.
Even time zone diversification would cut costs, because traffic incidents from
commuter times would be more evenly distributed.

Not to mention training. There are always incidents where, despite the good
service of the vast majority of 911 workers, there are gross mistakes made in
some cases that can be traced back to poor training. A large facility can
develop excellent processes, training and electronic infrastructure to reduce
these sorts of problems.

Or is this already done?

~~~
sachinag
You really don't want people in a large call center out in the middle of
nowhere who are unaware of local landmarks and surroundings answering 9-1-1
calls. It's a huge public safety issue where you're dealing with distraught
people and the operator has to make sense of various small bits of information
quickly.

~~~
Retric
That's an important issue.

I would suggest having a backup to a large call center if the wait time is
over 30 seconds. The remote call center could have priority to "escalate" to
the local call center and share information. Integrating it so the local call
center could see what the remote site had typed and replay the message if the
caller stops responding would also improve that system.

Set things up as a distributed system so each site would accept incoming calls
if they had excess capacity and give remote sites access to local conditions.
So you can handle large sudden spikes without excessive staff.

The other option would be to try automatically handle some calls using
location information while the caller is waiting. (If you are calling about
the car crash at _ we are sending an ambulance. If you need further assistance
please stay on the line.)

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tlrobinson
Indeed, I witnessed a car accident a few days ago, and called 911. Sure
enough, I got a busy signal.

My first thought is that you should be put on hold rather than given a busy
signal, but I wonder if the busy signal helps filter out some of the non-
emergency calls.

~~~
fallentimes
Bringing up the non-emergency calls is a really good point. Abuse/misuse of
911 is a huge and serious problem:

<http://www.popcenter.org/problems/911_abuse/>

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aneesh
I recently had to call 911 when I witnessed a highway accident happen. I
must've called within 30 seconds, and the operator (I got through without any
wait or busy signal) told me they already had _several_ reports of that
accident -- within 30 seconds! I was impressed.

I guess it varies by locale.

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derefr
I think the simplest way to fix this particular problem would be to just
direct to a "recording buffer"--like voicemail, but an operator can come in at
any time when there's one available. There will have to be voice recognition
so they have a screen of what you've said so far; if they had to actually
listen to the buffer, they couldn't listen to _you_. However, if the line has
since gone dead, or you're just babbling incoherently or something similar,
they should be able to listen to the start of the buffer (while still having
you on in the other ear.)

On reflection, though, this probably isn't possible; if voice recognition
could understand these people to _any_ degree, there would already be
priority-triggers based on certain keywords (fire, seizure, etc.) and I'm sure
these haven't yet popped up. What _could_ work is if you had a _pair_ of
operators for each caller--one who comes in on the call-in-progress, and the
other who listens to the buffer and tells the first (or types into a shared
display) any additional information they need to know. The buffer operator
could then go on to another call, though perhaps having two available
operators for each call might help reduce mistakes. :)

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mynameishere
Yeah, dial "zero", then say "operator, connect me to the police department."

You have people dying and you can't go to plan b?

~~~
derefr
If you _are_ the person dying, no, maybe not.

------
lionhearted
True story:

I'm in Boston, near Copley Square. Go into the Citizen's Bank ATM which is
inside a glass alcove with a security door that you need to swip your ATM card
to get into. While I'm getting money, a crazy, twitching homeless guy starts
banging on the door. His eyes have something wrong with them, he's shaking and
twitching, looks out of his mind.

I look round for another way out, there isn't, I've got to go through the
door. So I open it, and go to step out. He goes to block my way and grab my
arm, and says loudly, "Gimmie a dollar! Gimmie a dollar!!!"

I shake him off me, and get away from there.

Now, I'm a pretty big, strong guy. Not exactly an easy mark - and this guy had
no qualms about it. I figure he must've, absolutely must've been on some kind
of stimulants.

So I call 911 on my cell phone. Explain what happened, detailed the look in
his eyes and that I think he might on some kind of drugs, and that I'm worried
if a smaller person or older person went into there and the guy did his crazy
act. I was calm about it, and tried to impart the sense of urgency I was
getting at the same time. The 911 lady transfers me to someone else, and I
tell the story again. This person tells me I'm talking to the wrong department
and gives me another number. I hang up and call that police precinct. A guy
answers, I explain the story, and the call is disconnected - and not on my
end, I always had perfect reception around Copley.

I call back and and they tell me, once again, I'm talking to the wrong place,
say they'll transfer me, and the call drops again. And again, not on this end.

A bit annoyed and disheartened at this point, I called my Mom who I was going
to have dinner with that night, and said, yes, I'll be at dinner, by the way,
there was this crazy guy and the police don't seem to care, even though I'm
pretty sure something bad could happen to someone. Best case, some people are
getting scared/intimidated. Worst case? Who knows. The guy was out of his
frigging mind. And again, I'm a pretty big, strong looking guy.

My Mom says forget it, you tried. That didn't sit well with me, but I let it
go and hopped on the Green line to head to dinner. That still doesn't sit with
me to this day - what if something had happened? What the hell else could I
have done? Go look for an uniformed officer nearby and tell him personally? (I
took a quick look, didn't see anyone). Go confront the guy myself? (Seems like
a bad idea) That whole event just sat poorly with me - my intuition tells me,
"this is a bad situation and needs to be dealt with", I try going through the
authorities, and get a lot of run-around, transfers, and disconnected twice. I
still don't feel good about that to this day - and I'm left wondering if I
could have handled that differently and what the hell all the people I spoke
to were thinking.

~~~
vaksel
Should have called back and told them the bank was getting robbed by a crazy
looking homeless person.

Would have had the entire police department there right away

~~~
philwelch
And lionhearted would have been fined for reporting a false emergency.
Meanwhile, crazy homeless guy gets off scot free.

------
tetha
"Dear mugger/murderer/rapist, would thee please be so kind to delay your
desired actions by a mere 20 minutes, while I try to communicate with 911?
Certainly, you would agree that it is not a gentlemans way to abuse this
misbehaviour of the emergency call. May I offer you a cup of tea while we wait
for the call to go through?"

In all seriousness, if there is an emergency hotline and you need around 5 -
10 minutes to get the call actually through there, that is just not acceptable
in several situations. and I am not even talking about 20 minutes or half an
hour. Half an hour is an eternity with regard to emergencies.

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rjurney
I called 911 to report an OD on the sidewalk last week and was on hold for 4
minutes. :/

~~~
blhack
OD = old drunk?

~~~
trickjarrett
OverDose

~~~
blhack
Oh thanks..

Sorry, to the downvoters: I genuinely did not know what OD stood for (I
usually see it used as a verb, not a noun) , sorry...

