Location in an emergency - what3words
Although fortunately very rare, we have had a couple of incidents where an ambulance has had to be called following an accident on our club rides. The problem then arises of giving the control room our exact position. Nowadays they normally use postcodes, but that doesn't work if you are on a country lane a long way from a house or other building with a letter box. The other option is an Ordnance Survey grid reference, but with the use of Garmins, etc, there may not be anyone on the ride who both has an OS map and knows how to give a grid ref. And as we discovered when we needed an ambulance in the Welsh Borders a few years ago, not all control rooms will accept a grid reference in any case.
However, there is now a solution to this. A company called what3words has developed a system that gives every 3m x 3m square in the world a unique three-word reference. So, for example, the location of our AGM next week is at ///left.tribal.hungry There are apps for Android and iOS that will use the phone's GPS to give you your address, even if you don't have an internet connection.
Even better, most police, ambulance and fire services will now accept what3words addresses - there is a full list here.
It would be a good idea for our rides leaders (in fact, all our riders) to have this app on their phones, just in case.
However, there is now a solution to this. A company called what3words has developed a system that gives every 3m x 3m square in the world a unique three-word reference. So, for example, the location of our AGM next week is at ///left.tribal.hungry There are apps for Android and iOS that will use the phone's GPS to give you your address, even if you don't have an internet connection.
Even better, most police, ambulance and fire services will now accept what3words addresses - there is a full list here.
It would be a good idea for our rides leaders (in fact, all our riders) to have this app on their phones, just in case.
Comments
Well done Richard, you've given the location as the Tailor's shop two doors down the road. You should work for our emergency services. I think you mean https://what3words.com/spine.tells.cope (try saying that quickly...)
If anyone chokes on their battered halibut during the AGM I'll be calling an ambulance to the Calthorpe Arms - a pub on the corner of Gray's Inn Road and Wren Street. If they start asking silly questions or asking me to download an app I'll drop the phone in someone's beer and attempt the Heimlich manoeuvre on the poor sod instead of them listen to us arguing over pronunciation, singular or plural, postcodes, grid references, and lines of longitude and latitude.
1) Actually, my error unintentionally illustrates the problem well - OK, I was a bit hasty in getting the address, and I did it by doing a postcode search on the w3w webpage, but it demonstrates that a postcode is not a very precise way of specifying location.
2) Of course, in reality if you needed to call an ambulance to a pub you'd use the pub's name and address. What we're discussing here is an accident on a country lane, where you'd get the address from the app using GPS, not a postcode, and in any case being about 100m out wouldn't matter (a classic 6-figure OSGR only specifies a 100m x 100m square anyway).
What3words is a for-profit company with excellent marketing. The arguable flaw is that it uses words, different in each country.
I don't disagree that w3w is a well-marketed commercial company, but the fact is that their solution is now supported by most, if not all of the emergency services that we might need on a club run.
The "three words" can be in a number of languages, yes, but any of them work worldwide, and for the vast majority of our rides only English is relevant anyway. Reading a string of numbers over the phone is more likely to be error-prone, and OSGR's are GB-only (they don't even work in N. Ireland).
To cut a long story short I experienced some difficulty with giving the location because the emergency operator could not process the full grid reference that I'd been taught to do on navigation courses. But within a minute I managed to describe where I was and on what path - "I'm south west of Potters Bar on a bridleway between a school and South Mimms Services...." This slight delay of less than a minute paled into insignificance because we waited two hours for anyone to turn up, and then it was the Hazard Response Team who could give her morphine but not take her to hospital. There was a further hour to wait for an ambulance -- more than three hours after I first dialled 999. I rang the ambulance four times, each time going through the same questions about "Is the patient breathing, bleeding, conscious... and where are you?...)
East of England Ambulance has a poor response record. With this in mind, I would suggest the best app to have on your phone is Uber. If it is safe to move someone -- like a broken arm or collar bone or even a broken hip (my own experience) -- it may be quicker to make a decision to get them into a taxi and to the nearest A and E dept
Answer: Yes, but on the condition that the ride leader has received formal training as a first-aider.
(From Guidance Note 2 & 3 – Organiser’s Liability Insurance FAQs)
I have received formal training as a first-aider. A Royal Life Saving Society bronze medal ... erm... in 1988.
On overnights if I'm the Tec, I carry a space blanket.
We should encourage leaders to do a course, it's a great pity CUK charge so much for the ones they run.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.ordnancesurvey.oslocate.android&hl=en
Probably a version at the fruit shop.
Especially useful if you don't have access to OS mapping. No internet signal required.