Emergency Location Details

[Ming the Merciless]

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...

Then they need to deal with their internal problems and contact someone in their office or ring their IT support. That'd soon see them sort their systems out.

It is a bit like the banking phone systems where you put your account no in, then when you get a human, they ask for it. Erm, your system just asked me to provide that 15 options ago...

 

[Pat "5mph"]

If you have a 'find my phone' type app installed and are able to give the passwords then most force's control rooms have an in-house intelligence officer who can log in to your account and locate you from that.

Thanks for this useful info, I did not know that!

 

[Drago]

No worries our Pat. I'm not just a pretty face

 

[Slick]

No worries our Pat. I'm not just a pretty face

Not even...

 

[snorri]

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...

I had an identical experience, a call from my local council clean up team requiring confirmation of the location. When I queried why the OS Grid ref I had given was not sufficient, the guy replied "They don't pass on the Grid Ref to us".

 

[Bazzer]

I too was under the impression that my 'phone gave my location to the emergency services; that was until I broke my leg in two places at 1am on a country road. Trying to explain to the call handler where I was, when the call handler didn't even know the nearest towns I was referring to, whilst being in some considerable pain, was to say the least trying.

 

[graham bowers]

@BADGER.BRAD so important to have a plan, isn't it. I've been involved in a couple of serious rescue situations in the worlds of mountaineering and scuba diving and the preparation helped.

 

[PeteXXX]

What about using the Locate Me on a motoring organisation app, if you have one?
I'm with Green Flag, and it shows my position to a very high degree. I'd be inclined to ring them, if all else fails, and get them to raise to alert.
Interesting topic though. I usually know where I am, but might have difficulty explaining it to someone not local.

 

[NorthernDave]

What about using the Locate Me on a motoring organisation app, if you have one?
I'm with Green Flag, and it shows my position to a very high degree. I'd be inclined to ring them, if all else fails, and get them to raise to alert.
Interesting topic though. I usually know where I am, but might have difficulty explaining it to someone not local.

Last time I rang Green Flag I was in a queue for nearly 15 minutes waiting for them to answer. They played "Rescue Me" by Fontella Bass in between telling me my call was was important to them.

 

[Piemaster]

While OS maps are very good, surely a Lat/Long reference is better if you want help, every piece of GPS kit uses them, even if you can't access it easily.
You can even type it into google desktop maps and it will give an accurate location. Beer anyone? Locating from a OS reference takes more effort, and the Garmin has always pinpointed me everywhere, be that a Brazilian beach or middle of the Baltic.

 

[DaveReading]

While OS maps are very good, surely a Lat/Long reference is better if you want help, every piece of GPS kit uses them, even if you can't access it easily.
You can even type it into google desktop maps and it will give an accurate location. Beer anyone? Locating from a OS reference takes more effort, and the Garmin has always pinpointed me everywhere, be that a Brazilian beach or middle of the Baltic.

Conversion between GPS lat/lon (WGS84) and OS grid is, in IT terms, a trivial exercise. Any rescue coordination centre that doesn't have that facility in their systems should seriously look at their kit and/or provider.

 

[ColinJ]

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 thought I ought to check my phone and make sure it did what I thought it did. It turns out that its GPS was disabled and I had to mess about with a few Android permissions to re-enable it. I also couldn't remember how to find the Grid Ref on the mapping app. I wouldn't have liked to try and do all of this while lying injured on a remote country road!

Anyway, it is now set up in case I ever need it in a hurry. The GPS locks on in a few tens of seconds, and the app gives me a longitude/latitude reading rather than a Grid Ref, with an estimated GPS error of <= 10 metres.

 

[PaulSB]

Lots of good info and suggestions in place. I will be setting my phone up accordingly and will check to see what my Wahoo offers.

 

[graham bowers]

Interesting comments about lat/long versus grid coordinates and ease of obtaining / converting.
In my opinion, the absolute crux is to know in advance what you are going to use, to be practiced in your chosen method and to know exactly what it is. More on that at the end of the post.

I prefer grid coordinates as that's what I've used for navigating on the hill since I was taught that in the scouts. I've only had to call the emergency services out twice and grid coordinates were accepted on both occasions. Once in a mountain rescue situation, and one in a burning car on the road situation.

Knowing what method you are using, how hard can that be?
Well, there are two methods of expressing a grid reference., something I only learned recently. The method I was taught donkeys years ago when using paper maps is of the form SK 320 085 where SK refers to in which 100 Km square the reference is, then the other two groups of 3 numbers are the eastings and northings read off the edge of the map. This isn't meant to be a tutorial, by the way, I'm just presenting enough detail to make my point. So, the numbers 320 085 are a reference to an origin that is the bottom left corner of the 100 Km square, SK in this case. However, another form of grid reference exists that is all numeric, where the origin is the bottom left corner of the SV square, irrespective of which square you are actually in. I only found out about this when somebody showed me how to obtain a grid reference from the streetmap.co.uk website. Streetmap quotes all numeric first. The all numeric reference can be determined from a paper map, by the way, there is a prefix number that can be found in the corners of the map.
Lat/long can be expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, or degrees and decimals of a degree. And I'm really not sure whether the lat/long values marked on an OS map correspond to WGS 84 that I understand is used by GPS systems.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Interesting comments about lat/long versus grid coordinates and ease of obtaining / converting.
In my opinion, the absolute crux is to know in advance what you are going to use, to be practiced in your chosen method and to know exactly what it is. More on that at the end of the post.

I prefer grid coordinates as that's what I've used for navigating on the hill since I was taught that in the scouts. I've only had to call the emergency services out twice and grid coordinates were accepted on both occasions. Once in a mountain rescue situation, and one in a burning car on the road situation.

Knowing what method you are using, how hard can that be?
Well, there are two methods of expressing a grid reference., something I only learned recently. The method I was taught donkeys years ago when using paper maps is of the form SK 320 085 where SK refers to in which 100 Km square the reference is, then the other two groups of 3 numbers are the eastings and northings read off the edge of the map. This isn't meant to be a tutorial, by the way, I'm just presenting enough detail to make my point. So, the numbers 320 085 are a reference to an origin that is the bottom left corner of the 100 Km square, SK in this case. However, another form of grid reference exists that is all numeric, where the origin is the bottom left corner of the SV square, irrespective of which square you are actually in. I only found out about this when somebody showed me how to obtain a grid reference from the streetmap.co.uk website. Streetmap quotes all numeric first. The all numeric reference can be determined from a paper map, by the way, there is a prefix number that can be found in the corners of the map.
Lat/long can be expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, or degrees and decimals of a degree. And I'm really not sure whether the lat/long values marked on an OS map correspond to WGS 84 that I understand is used by GPS systems.