Emergency Location Details

[classic33]

The system was geared towards driving time, as I found out. Twenty minutes from your last known/identifable location can be quite a different distance on two wheels, under your own power.

 

[fossyant]

Always does concern me as some of the routes I ride off road have poor signal, and despite not being more than a mile or two from a house, it's remote. It's not far from home either, but a nasty crash, and no-one would find you for some time. Hence tending to ride more carefully when descending on my 'own'.

 

[Drago]

I wouldn't say don't do it, but it's not good practice to ride off road alone. The system I teach advises riding in pairs of fours.

I would do it myself with suitable caution..and my satphone

 

[ColinJ]

I had to speak to a 999 operator from the scene of an accident 3 years ago. I kept repeating that it was on the B-road west out of Pateley Bridge in North Yorkshire, about 1 mile up Greenhow Hill in the direction of Grassington. I don't know if the operator could actually see a map of the area, but that description is all that is needed to get a vehicle to the scene by road. She kept asking for details of landmarks etc. I suspect that it was to help guide the air ambulance which turned up about 10 minutes later, but it would have been very obvious from the air anyway because traffic was backed up in both directions from the blocked road and visibility was good on a clear summer evening.

I now have OS maps for the whole country on my phone and using its GPS I can see a marker on the map showing where I am to within about 15 metres. A grid reference might not help a 999 operator, but I could give them the name of the road, and how far along it I am from the nearest town or village. If offroad, I could still come up with a good description.

 

[subaqua]

just get a breitling https://www.breitling.com/gb-en/emergency/

 

[graham bowers]

I use an iOS app called GPS OS that will return a grid reference and whilst it needs to access GPS satellites, it doesn't need a mobile signal. I do this as part of the emergency plan for woodland work volunteering I do as we are felling with chainsaws. It is possible to screenshot the grid reference image and that gets sent to the photographs folder. It is possible to make a mobile phone call and during the call, so pull up the image and so read the grid reference, I just did the experiment. I wouldn't normally do that as the grid ref is written on the site emergency details form for the day. For the purpose of the circumstances of this thread, screenshotting at the accident location means you could move if you needed to in order to obtain a mobile signal, and you would still have the incident grid ref.

 

[BADGER.BRAD]

I use with my android phone OS Locate this gives you the option to share your location via various methods email /TXT message. I once went off road motorcycling in the Breacon Beacons with a friend, He knew the area so I naively went along thinking he knows what he is doing and where we are. This turned out to be wrong, he had an accident and went over the handle bars with the bike landing on top of him hurting his leg. We were in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain in minus conditions in supposed the most unoccupied part of the UK that exists (so I saw on a resent documentary) Very luckily for me he was still conscious and managed to get our grid ref up on his GPS which I then over a 10 minute nightmare of losing signal and neither side of the conversation being able to hear due to the wind noise finally managed to get them to send me a mobile number and I text message the location to them. By this time it was getting dark. We were rescued and as luck would have it there was nothing broken and we were able to rescue his bike the following day. If we had been in a valley at the time we would have had no signal, if he was unconscious I would not have been able to get our location and would have had to move not knowing where I had left my mate. After this I brought a GPS learned how to use it and always had a copy of our route loaded into it plus a couple of spare pens or pencils in case I had to move location in order to get a signal or help I could write down the original location so I and emergency services could get back there. I do a lots of walking by myself locally with my dogs and some times mountain bike in remote locations and always make sure I have some sort of location finder with me.

 

[PaulSB]

I had to speak to a 999 operator from the scene of an accident 3 years ago. I kept repeating that it was on the B-road west out of Pateley Bridge in North Yorkshire, about 1 mile up Greenhow Hill in the direction of Grassington. I don't know if the operator could actually see a map of the area, but that description is all that is needed to get a vehicle to the scene by road. She kept asking for details of landmarks etc. I suspect that it was to help guide the air ambulance which turned up about 10 minutes later, but it would have been very obvious from the air anyway because traffic was backed up in both directions from the blocked road and visibility was good on a clear summer evening.

I now have OS maps for the whole country on my phone and using its GPS I can see a marker on the map showing where I am to within about 15 metres. A grid reference might not help a 999 operator, but I could give them the name of the road, and how far along it I am from the nearest town or village. If offroad, I could still come up with a good description.

I had to call 999 a couple of years ago from Hardknott. We were hiking and came across a guy in a camper van who had got stuck. He'd discovered he couldn't get up, tried to do a three point turn and ran out of room!! He asked us to see him back while he reversed towards a drop. He was six feet from the drop so we refused but offered to call 999 for him as he didn't have a signal. I gave the location and we carried on hiking. The weather had been attrocious all weekend and Hardknott was closed.

We arrived at the roman fort near the top and my phone rang. It was a call handler asking if I could be more specific about the road - I had to point out there is only one road over Hardknott!!!!

A bit later we were walking on the flat road back to Eskdale. A police 4x4 slowed and asked if we had seen a camper van. I explained we called it in. The police officer said "One more question. Can you tell me if the road closed signs are still in place?" We said yes and oh how we laughed!!

 

[tom73]

Worth rembering if you have one Apple Watch will contact 999 or which ever number for the country your in automatically via Siri or holding the crown down. If set up will then automatically message a given contact that your in trouble togeather with your location and if it changers it updates your contact.

 

[DaveReading]

A grid reference might not help a 999 operator

I sincerely hope that's not the case.

 

[fossyant]

I wouldn't say don't do it, but it's not good practice to ride off road alone. The system I teach advises riding in pairs of fours.

I would do it myself with suitable caution..and my satphone

Unfortunately, I'd never get out. I don't do complete wilderness, but it's far enough !

 

[NorthernDave]

It's a few years ago now, but I happened across an incident where someone had collapsed in the street and the ambulance service call handler repeatedly asked for a postcode (which I didn't know), despite me being able to advise that we were at the junction of X Street and Y Drive in Z Town.

As has been said, you can fairly easily get a grid ref from a Garmin or smartphone now which will do the trick.

 

[ColinJ]

I sincerely hope that's not the case.

I hope so too! I would have thought that an OS grid reference would be 'the gold standard' UK location description, although I suppose a 6 digit GR can only identify a 100 m x 100 m square so you would have to add other details to describe the precise location.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I came across an obstructed right of way years back. I had my GPS on me so recorded a waypoint to mark the location. Back home I reported it to said councils right if way team giving a 10 digit grid reference. Could they find it on their mapping, oh no, they heeded the footpath number you sometimes see on the sign posts.

I do hope in this day and age they would ge able to identify a location via a number of methods, including lat / lon, grid reference, street town, road junction etc. After all we can trivially do that ourselves now. Be a bit backward if their specialized syatems cannot do the same.

 

[NorthernDave]

I came across an obstructed right of way years back. I had my GPS on me so recorded a waypoint to mark the location. Back home I reported it to said councils right if way team giving a 10 digit grid reference. Could they find it on their mapping, oh no, they heeded the footpath number you sometimes see on the sign posts.

I do hope in this day and age they would ge able to identify a location via a number of methods, including lat / lon, grid reference, street town, road junction etc. After all we can trivially do that ourselves now. Be a bit backward if their specialized syatems cannot do the same.

I reported some fly tipping to our council via their website, which requires you to put a pin in an OS Map and then list the location as well. I got a phone call several days later asking for more details on the location, which I provided but queried why they were ringing as I'd marked the exact spot on their map. Apparently the online reporting system doesn't pass the map co-ordinates on to the team that have to deal with the report and they have no way of accessing the info...