<https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>

"Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.

Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."

"An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
Park. The informant gave the 999 call
handler a What3Words location which was
close to Hawes End. The team sent a
Landrover first truck to the location only to
find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
the true location within walking distance
of the base. Fortunately more team
members had arrived at base and were
able to respond quickly to this potentially
serious medical incident. The casualty was
assessed and stretchered back to base for
further assessment and to await the arrival
of an ambulance.
This is the second callout in 3 days (and
there have been others) when the W3W
location has been close enough to be
believable but wrong enough to be
useless. W3W should not be relied upon
on its own. Always give a verbal
description of where the casualty is and
better still a grid reference from a map or
use the app OS-Locate"

Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-dryver.com> wrote:
> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>
> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.

Seems like somebody is collecting them:
http://w3w.me.ss/

Theo

In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
dryver.com> scribeth thus
><https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>
>"Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>
>Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."
>
>"An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>handler a What3Words location which was
>close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>Landrover first truck to the location only to
>find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>the true location within walking distance
>of the base. Fortunately more team
>members had arrived at base and were
>able to respond quickly to this potentially
>serious medical incident. The casualty was
>assessed and stretchered back to base for
>further assessment and to await the arrival
>of an ambulance.
>This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>there have been others) when the W3W
>location has been close enough to be
>believable but wrong enough to be
>useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>on its own. Always give a verbal
>description of where the casualty is and
>better still a grid reference from a map or
>use the app OS-Locate"

I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
postcode!!!

W3W is useful for picking up off-spring after music festivals especially
ones where the car park was a field not so long ago;)..
--
Tony Sayer

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.

Give him a keyboard, and he will reveal himself.

On 30/08/2022 21:37, tony sayer wrote:
> In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
> dryver.com> scribeth thus
>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>
>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>
>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."
>>
>> "An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>> Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>> handler a What3Words location which was
>> close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>> Landrover first truck to the location only to
>> find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>> the true location within walking distance
>> of the base. Fortunately more team
>> members had arrived at base and were
>> able to respond quickly to this potentially
>> serious medical incident. The casualty was
>> assessed and stretchered back to base for
>> further assessment and to await the arrival
>> of an ambulance.
>> This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>> there have been others) when the W3W
>> location has been close enough to be
>> believable but wrong enough to be
>> useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>> on its own. Always give a verbal
>> description of where the casualty is and
>> better still a grid reference from a map or
>> use the app OS-Locate"
>
> I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
> they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
> decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
> postcode!!!
>

What's the postcode for Scafell Pike?

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

In message <telsmr$1iemp$3@dont-email.me>, at 21:42:03 on Tue, 30 Aug
2022, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 30/08/2022 21:37, tony sayer wrote:
>> In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
>> dryver.com> scribeth thus
>>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>>
>>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>>
>>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."
>>>
>>> "An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>>> Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>>> handler a What3Words location which was
>>> close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>>> Landrover first truck to the location only to
>>> find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>>> the true location within walking distance
>>> of the base. Fortunately more team
>>> members had arrived at base and were
>>> able to respond quickly to this potentially
>>> serious medical incident. The casualty was
>>> assessed and stretchered back to base for
>>> further assessment and to await the arrival
>>> of an ambulance.
>>> This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>>> there have been others) when the W3W
>>> location has been close enough to be
>>> believable but wrong enough to be
>>> useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>>> on its own. Always give a verbal
>>> description of where the casualty is and
>>> better still a grid reference from a map or
>>> use the app OS-Locate"
>> I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
>> they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
>> decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
>> postcode!!!
>>
>
>What's the postcode for Scafell Pike?

not.easily.discovered
--
Roland Perry

On 31/08/2022 07:30, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <telsmr$1iemp$3@dont-email.me>, at 21:42:03 on Tue, 30 Aug
> 2022, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>> On 30/08/2022 21:37, tony sayer wrote:
>>> In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
>>> dryver.com> scribeth thus
>>>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>>>
>>>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>>>
>>>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one
>>>> day..."
>>>>
>>>> "An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>>>> Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>>>> handler a What3Words location which was
>>>> close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>>>> Landrover first truck to the location only to
>>>> find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>>>> the true location within walking distance
>>>> of the base. Fortunately more team
>>>> members had arrived at base and were
>>>> able to respond quickly to this potentially
>>>> serious medical incident. The casualty was
>>>> assessed and stretchered back to base for
>>>> further assessment and to await the arrival
>>>> of an ambulance.
>>>> This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>>>> there have been others) when the W3W
>>>> location has been close enough to be
>>>> believable but wrong enough to be
>>>> useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>>>> on its own. Always give a verbal
>>>> description of where the casualty is and
>>>> better still a grid reference from a map or
>>>> use the app OS-Locate"
>>>  I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
>>> they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
>>> decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
>>> postcode!!!
>>>
>>
>> What's the postcode for Scafell Pike?
>
> not.easily.discovered

:-)

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On 30/08/2022 21:27, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>
> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>
> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."

I quite agree. I can't see any reason for using what-three-words, except that I assume that somebody somewhere is making money out of it and I don't want it to be my money.

But a bit more training of call centre staff is needed. A couple of years ago my car was scraped by another one so I had to report this to my insurance company in case I had to make a claim. The claims handler asked where the accident had occurred, I told offered him the choice of latitude and longitude or the National Grid reference. The call handler, to my astonishment, could not use lat/long and had never heard of the National Grid, nor even of Ordnance Survey. In the end we settled upon something like "on the main road a mile south of the village of Ambridge" as being good enough. I hope that if I ever have to make an emergency call then the call-handler would be a little more clued-up.

--
Clive Page

Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On 31/08/2022 07:30, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <telsmr$1iemp$3@dont-email.me>, at 21:42:03 on Tue, 30 Aug
>> 2022, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>> On 30/08/2022 21:37, tony sayer wrote:
>>>> In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
>>>> dryver.com> scribeth thus
>>>>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>>>>
>>>>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>>>>
>>>>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one
>>>>> day..."
>>>>>
>>>>> "An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>>>>> Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>>>>> handler a What3Words location which was
>>>>> close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>>>>> Landrover first truck to the location only to
>>>>> find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>>>>> the true location within walking distance
>>>>> of the base. Fortunately more team
>>>>> members had arrived at base and were
>>>>> able to respond quickly to this potentially
>>>>> serious medical incident. The casualty was
>>>>> assessed and stretchered back to base for
>>>>> further assessment and to await the arrival
>>>>> of an ambulance.
>>>>> This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>>>>> there have been others) when the W3W
>>>>> location has been close enough to be
>>>>> believable but wrong enough to be
>>>>> useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>>>>> on its own. Always give a verbal
>>>>> description of where the casualty is and
>>>>> better still a grid reference from a map or
>>>>> use the app OS-Locate"
>>>>  I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
>>>> they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
>>>> decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
>>>> postcode!!!
>>>>
>>>
>>> What's the postcode for Scafell Pike?
>>
>> not.easily.discovered
>
> :-)
>

<https://w3w.co/attends.untrained.booklet> seems to be the actual reference
according to where W3W’s version of Google maps puts the summit. I’m not
quite convinced. It’s the one of the three British national summits I’ve
never been up so I’m not familiar with the terrain.

Sam

--
The entity formerly known as Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk
Spit the dummy to reply

On 31/08/2022 14:40, Sam Wilson wrote:
> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 31/08/2022 07:30, Roland Perry wrote:
>>> In message <telsmr$1iemp$3@dont-email.me>, at 21:42:03 on Tue, 30 Aug
>>> 2022, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>> On 30/08/2022 21:37, tony sayer wrote:
>>>>> In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
>>>>> dryver.com> scribeth thus
>>>>>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one
>>>>>> day..."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>>>>>> Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>>>>>> handler a What3Words location which was
>>>>>> close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>>>>>> Landrover first truck to the location only to
>>>>>> find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>>>>>> the true location within walking distance
>>>>>> of the base. Fortunately more team
>>>>>> members had arrived at base and were
>>>>>> able to respond quickly to this potentially
>>>>>> serious medical incident. The casualty was
>>>>>> assessed and stretchered back to base for
>>>>>> further assessment and to await the arrival
>>>>>> of an ambulance.
>>>>>> This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>>>>>> there have been others) when the W3W
>>>>>> location has been close enough to be
>>>>>> believable but wrong enough to be
>>>>>> useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>>>>>> on its own. Always give a verbal
>>>>>> description of where the casualty is and
>>>>>> better still a grid reference from a map or
>>>>>> use the app OS-Locate"
>>>>>  I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
>>>>> they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
>>>>> decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
>>>>> postcode!!!
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What's the postcode for Scafell Pike?
>>>
>>> not.easily.discovered
>>
>> :-)
>>
>
> <https://w3w.co/attends.untrained.booklet> seems to be the actual reference
> according to where W3W’s version of Google maps puts the summit. I’m not
> quite convinced. It’s the one of the three British national summits I’ve
> never been up so I’m not familiar with the terrain.
>

When I actually needed a position for Scafell I was about two-thirds of
the way up the climb. I was the only member of the party with a
cell-phone (a very unsmart Motorola analogue phone). The operator didn't
know what to do with the grid reference[1] so I got her to repeat it
back to me and then told her to pass it on to the fire brigade and
they'd know what to do with it.

[1] Actually a grid reference and a compass bearing which confused her
even more. We were reporting an incident that we could see but probably
wasn't visible at ground level because of the terrain.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On Wed, 31 Aug 2022 14:39:35 +0100, Clive Page <usenet@page2.eu>
wrote:

>
>But a bit more training of call centre staff is needed. A couple of years ago my car was scraped by another one so I had to report this to my insurance company in case I had to make a claim. The claims handler asked where the accident had occurred, I told offered him the choice of latitude and longitude or the National Grid reference. The call handler, to my astonishment, could not use lat/long and had never heard of the National Grid, nor even of Ordnance Survey. In the end we settled upon something like "on the main road a mile south of the village of Ambridge" as being good enough. I hope that if I ever have to make an emergency call then the call-handler would be a little more clued-up.

When I worked in a fire service control over 20 years ago new recruits
were trained to ask for the addrees and the nearest main road. But you
couldn't get it through to them that when the caller was on a main
road asking 'what's the nearest main road?' really wasn't very clever.

On 31/08/2022 16:18, Peter Johnson wrote:
> When I worked in a fire service control over 20 years ago new recruits
> were trained to ask for the addrees and the nearest main road. But you
> couldn't get it through to them that when the caller was on a main
> road asking 'what's the nearest main road?' really wasn't very clever.

Years ago, the North Wales fire brigades requested people write the NGR
of their location on something near the phone. I think there had been a
few cases of difficulty in finding locations - remote farms and of
course confusion with Welsh place names.

At work we had remote sites, often well away from a road. I ensured
that every site had a notice with details like NGR near the phone if
there was one.

It appears that Clive Page <usenet@page2.eu> said:
>On 30/08/2022 21:27, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>
>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>
>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."
>
>I quite agree. I can't see any reason for using what-three-words, except that I assume that somebody somewhere
>is making money out of it and I don't want it to be my money.

I hear there are countries with no street addresses, such as Nicaragua
and Mongolia, where W3W wins by being better than nothing.

Other than that I agree it is a gimmick pretending to be a solution in
search of a problem.

Largely unrelated comment: in the USA when they introduced the 911
emergency telephone number, in preparation the various counties and
municipalities assigned a street address to every place in the country
to which the post office delivered mail. That involved inventing new
street numbers and in some cases inventing names for small roads that
had never had a name. My sister's address changed from "Rural Route
#2, Box 17" to "1042 Ridge Road". In her case the road already had a
name but the had to invent the numbers.

We have ZIP codes, like post codes, but the five-digit versions most
people use typically cover an entire town. There are nine-digit
versions which have a granularity similar to post codes, and an 11
digit version used only by bulk mailers which gives a unique code to
every address. But nobody knows their 9 or 11 digit codes.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 21:42:03 +0100, Graeme Wall
<rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On 30/08/2022 21:37, tony sayer wrote:
>> In article <telrrg$1icml$1@dont-email.me>, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-
>> dryver.com> scribeth thus
>>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>>>
>>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>>>
>>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."
>>>
>>> "An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow
>>> Park. The informant gave the 999 call
>>> handler a What3Words location which was
>>> close to Hawes End. The team sent a
>>> Landrover first truck to the location only to
>>> find nobody. Further enquiries revealed
>>> the true location within walking distance
>>> of the base. Fortunately more team
>>> members had arrived at base and were
>>> able to respond quickly to this potentially
>>> serious medical incident. The casualty was
>>> assessed and stretchered back to base for
>>> further assessment and to await the arrival
>>> of an ambulance.
>>> This is the second callout in 3 days (and
>>> there have been others) when the W3W
>>> location has been close enough to be
>>> believable but wrong enough to be
>>> useless. W3W should not be relied upon
>>> on its own. Always give a verbal
>>> description of where the casualty is and
>>> better still a grid reference from a map or
>>> use the app OS-Locate"
>>
>> I remember a few years ago having to call the emergency services but
>> they wanted the bloody postcode! I have in my phone NGR, LAT LONG
>> decimal and the usual DMS format, W3W and still they wanted the bloody
>> postcode!!!
>>
>
>What's the postcode for Scafell Pike?
>
CA20 1EX.

On 31/08/2022 21:34, Charles Ellson wrote:
> CA20 1EX

I put that into Grid Reference Finder and it is centred on a village
several miles from Sca Fell so would not be of much help - we had that
problem years ago when working on a contract for a mobile phone company,
initially we were given just the postcode for sites which was of little
help in finding the sites.

Eventually they gave us NGR and we could find the sites even when up
above the cloud base as often happened.

In message <teobau$2rqm$2@gal.iecc.com>, at 19:03:58 on Wed, 31 Aug
2022, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> remarked:

>Largely unrelated comment: in the USA when they introduced the 911
>emergency telephone number, in preparation the various counties and
>municipalities assigned a street address to every place in the country
>to which the post office delivered mail.

And then you have the Native Americans living places where the
Republican Party wishes to deny them the vote, and apparently the
closest thing they have to an address is the PO Box where they collect
their mail (which allegedly isn't good enough to be able to register to
vote).
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, 1 Sep 2022 07:33:38 +0100, MB <MB@nospam.net> wrote:

>On 31/08/2022 21:34, Charles Ellson wrote:
>> CA20 1EX
>
>I put that into Grid Reference Finder and it is centred on a village
>several miles from Sca Fell so would not be of much help - we had that
>problem years ago when working on a contract for a mobile phone company,
>initially we were given just the postcode for sites which was of little
>help in finding the sites.
>
>Eventually they gave us NGR and we could find the sites even when up
>above the cloud base as often happened.
>
Standard geographical postcodes are not centred on anything, they
cover areas. These can vary from e.g. a row of buildings on one side
of the street to large expanses of countryside of no particular shape
which contain a few delivery points. Hence your need for NGRs which
cut the areas down to a square on the map which diminish in size as
the number of digits in the NGR increases.

On 30/08/2022 21:27, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>
> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>
> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one day..."

SNIP

I find that when I first open the app it gives a location somewhere
nearish to where I am, as in anything up to a mile away. But it soon
locates my square when I press what I guess is the location button on
the screen.

Peter (trunk.width.adjuster)

In message <kNWdnSzqH_wik4v-nZ2dnZfqn_vNnZ2d@brightview.co.uk>, at
15:59:10 on Mon, 5 Sep 2022, Dudbridge Donkey
<junk@broadband2k.plus.com> remarked:
>On 30/08/2022 21:27, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
>> <https://twitter.com/isleofmandan/status/1564528160519118848>
>> "Yet another failure of What3Words in a real emergency.
>> Do not use it for emergencies. It will end up killing someone one
>>day..."
>
>SNIP
>
>I find that when I first open the app it gives a location somewhere
>nearish to where I am, as in anything up to a mile away.

That sounds like cellsite location, which won't be very good in remote
locations.

>But it soon locates my square when I press what I guess is the location
>button on the screen.
>
>Peter (trunk.width.adjuster)

Do we know how many of these failures are an issues with location
services on the phone, rather than homonyms in the three words?

trunk.widths.adjuster is near the Brazil/Bolivia border.
--
Roland Perry