Ask HN: Why does a pizza app know my location and 911 doesn't?
I know I don't have all the facts. But apparently the system 911 is using to find your location, depending on where you live can have a 10% to 95% chance of finding your exact location; and by 2021 they still won't be able to find 1 out of 5 people.
Can someone tell me, if we're talking about bold people tackling the world's biggest problems, is there anyone working on this? It seems to me like an obvious, ripe place for disruption.
Here's a source of the problem explained in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-XlyB_QQYs
46 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 96.1 ms ] thread(This is not snark, in case you are wondering.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-XlyB_QQYs
My conclusion isn't that society doesn't value human lives; it's that the government isn't very efficient, and 911 dispatch is usually in the realm of government rather than private industry.
I wonder if there are any examples of privatized ambulance/emergency response service outperforming public services.
On the other hand, I have been homeless for nearly 4.5 years. Putting up with classier bullshit has made me question my high ideals. Caring about doing the right thing seems to only bite me in the ass. It neither makes money nor gets respected. Just today a project of mine created to be helpful to people was described as sponsored content.
I am pretty fed up. We live in a shitty world. Trying to make things better gets nothing but shit in response.
I wish I could just check out and stop caring. But, unfortunately, I am not likely to win the lottery, so I am failing to find a path forward on taking the position of "Fuck you, got mine."
Anyway, this was perhaps bad timing on your part for posting this here. My grumpiness about the world isn't intended as a personal attack.
Take care.
First, most pizza apps are just that, an app. That app has access to your phones location data through GPS and some even use WiFi location services. Hence it can send a nearly exact position to where you are standing.
Contrast that to the standard phone network and systems ANI/ALI solution, which still does not (completely) support GPS coordinates at this point. In addition, while there were phases (phase I and phase II) of cell phone location compliance put into place by the federal government, most networks and phone companies lagged far behind in implementation of those standards. On top of that, city and county 911 dispatch centers (PSAP and secondary centers) also have to upgrade their phone and CAD integrations to support better location services.
As for why it isn't being disrupted. Simple, looooooooong sales cycles for an extremely limited market that is vigorously defended by the incumbents. Seriously, it isn't rare for a 2-3 year sales cycle for a lot of 911 components and systems. 18 months is about the normal when it involves critical systems with 12 months being probably the fastest you see anything change. Not to mention, the partners you need involved to make a solution work and be palatable to the 911 centers are the exact same companies who want to keep you out of their market, so it isn't easy. Not impossible, just not very probable without seriously deep pockets to support what would likely be a 3-5 year development to first sale. It makes selling to enterprises look like a fast process and cake walk.
Sure, there'd need to be a standard for doing that - if an obvious choice (or combination of choices) doesn't already exist - but to the naïve observer (me) that would seem far simpler than massive legacy hardware upgrades.
Hell, it wouldn't even have to be encoded: it could just `say "caller is at $LOCATION"` prior to connecting the caller - giving the person in the call centre clear and precise information right away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_resource_location_servic...
Plus there's the problem of conveying that information to emergency services. Each department, of which there are surely tens of thousands, may have completely different computer systems.
But even at that, all the PSAPS and secondary centers too would still require an upgrade because the software and hardware they use to convert calls and strip the meta-data would need to be updated. In some cases I think today it would require more flashes of equipment versus new hardware, but it is still a big change.
The voice option is interesting, but would hit a different type of issue, as it would require retraining of every call-taker and dispatcher, and would require significant system upgrades/changes still. Most times when you dial 911 in the US your call is routed to the nearest PSAP (based on the cell tower or physical address) then a call taker picks up the call and their first question is Police/Fire or Medical. Depending how you answer this your call is forwarded to either a dispatcher within their center or transferred. Many times these call takers have limited or no access to the CAD system from which your provider will be dispatched from, so they cannot add location data to a call. In other centers the call taker could do it, but it would still require retraining. Again, stupidity and politics is the problem here, not a technical issue.
On the voice option, while we have come a long way in predictive dialing for marketing purposes call pickup and voice recognition is still one of the hardest parts, so playing the location message at the proper time to not over talk or delay the call needlessly across all the various centers in the US would take a pretty significant platform and a lot of testing.
Last point, there are still a significant number of mobile devices that do not contain a GPS chip, which leads to the other problem, location can't be a standard around just GPS coordinates (yet). But most cell providers have the mojo now to use the towers to narrow your position quickly and automatically, another part of Phase compliance but the "area" they provide is still pretty damn big and doesn't make finding a person easy, but it at least narrows the area to search considerably. But how that gets communicated would all have to be agreed to by a huge number of people.
Personally, I think I'd rather be blindfolded trying to heard cats in a field, it'd be easier then getting telcos and existing vendors on the same page.
She entered scattershot information from a frantic caller, and using a combination of keyboard shortcuts, foot pedals (yes, foot pedals), and stand-up-and-hand-signal-to-a-colleague-while-keying-a-mic, dispatched an ambulance within seconds. Way faster than the caller would ever realize.
You're not just replacing software/hardware, you've also got to make allowances for the humans in the system. Little things make huge differences in those situations, so throwing the old system out is painful. Evolving the current one (as davismwfl pointed out) is challenging for its own reasons.
Doesn't mean it isn't important. Just hard to do.
But here's what I don't understand at all...
Has anyone ever been sailing? On yachts we have radios, but these radios are designed assuming the person operating it might be completely ignorant.
So we have this literal red button, you lift a flap, hold down the button and the radio sends an SOS with complete GPS coordinates and boat name on Channel 16. Then it leaves it on channel 16 so you can describe the emergency.
So back to smartphones, on smartphones we have dialer apps, these apps know when you dial 911. Why in holy heck don't they have a big red button on-screen which when pushed sends your current GPS coordinates USING VOICE over the open line?
Here's what we need to do that:
- Dialer app. CHECK.
- GPS. CHECK.
- Some kind of UI. CHECK.
- Text to voice system. CHECK.
We have all of the components to roll out a system TODAY which tells 911 via voice where you are calling from. It would almost be free, but we haven't, and nobody is suggesting it.
Everyone is talking about these crazy complicated standards that will, best case, be available in 2021 and cost ungodly amounts. I am talking about using voice which the operator themselves can type in.
Am I mad here? Why isn't this a thing? Why doesn't the dialer even DISPLAY GPS coordinates when you dial 911?
Seriously I bet if someone made this a big deal we could get Apple and Google to sign on almost immediately and this would be available within a year. All smartphones already have all of the prerequisites to do this!
Analogous to how organ donation should be opt-out instead of opt-in.
And it's not like this is a readily producible resource - people die on organ transfer lists precisely because other avenues of acquisition can't meet the necessary levels. It's a question of priority IMO, maybe not philosophically ideal but in a cooperative society compromise can save many lives.
I must say I hate the emergency button on the stock lock screen, and how glitchy replacement lock screens are.
- If the user doesn't know the location, and they have given the app permission to read GPS data the assistant operator could check the phone's location data and chime in with the correct address in the conversation.
- If the user is unable to speak, they could send text messages to the assistant operator, who would relay them to the 911 dispatcher.
- If the user is unable to do anything more than pressing a button, and if they've given the app permission for this, the assistant operator could check the messages or other data on the user's phone to try and find out what the issue is (e.g. domestic violence.)
- The user could initiate a video call with the assistant operator who could theoretically be able to more accurately describe certain issues (assuming they are better trained medically) than the user themselves could.
Here there is an app that will send that information to 911, without worrying about giving special permissions at the time of the call. I'm not sure why that isn't standard on cell phones everywhere, especially since phones generally come pre-loaded with apps. I know that landlines in the states send the information to 911, so I would think some people much smarter than I would be able to make an interface to go between the two. I suppose that would take some time, given how well the government seems to work together to get important things done these days.
The phone companies COULD upgrade to newer technology right now, but that would cost money.
Or...
They could wait until it is a crisis and then DEMAND that municipal governments pay for the upgrade.
Which would you do?
He emphasized that number and tried to make a big deal of it, neglecting to mention that it really only matters in situations where the person can't describe their location anyhow.
He gave an example of someone who was in a car in a lake, and gave the 911 operator the names of the streets from the nearby sign and they were unable to find one of the streets on their map. The person died.
So people are dying from this already. And I'm sure the families are already making as much noise as they can.
In the end, the answer is: Despite our crazy headlong rush into technology, not everything is as advanced as we'd like, and there are various reasons why not. From conspiracies to capitalism to good old fashioned privacy, it just isn't there yet.
Granted, it could rely on the software running on your phone to add information for the dispatcher, but not everyone has one, and not everyone who does has the same kind. And that's a good thing!
So it takes standardization, and government regulation. Standardization can work pretty well when there's a nice tight feedback loop with customers who are interested in the results (web browsers, for instance). How many telephone customers would switch phones based on the details of how well the phone supports 911-related features? It's not like we can test them without actually calling 911.
Government regulation can also work, provided you're willing to pay the costs: time and money. Lots of time, and lots of money. In fact, it costs so much for the government to regulate things like this that we end up in this exact situation. Phones have completely changed since the last 911 regulations were updated, requiring telcos to provide location information to 911 when the caller is using a mobile phone. It took years after that regulation was introduced before the telcos were compliant, and before all the local dispatch operations could use the information.
The same would happen today if new regulations were introduced requiring the phone itself to send this information; it would take years for anything to happen. (Though I bet Google and Apple could move faster than the telcos, they've certainly proved to be capable of that.)
And that's all ignoring the inaccuracy of GPS when inside of buildings, the time it takes for the phone to determine the location, etc.
Still, in spite of all of that, now is probably a decent time to start making those changes. It's been long enough since the last updates to the regulations, and new phones are capable enough now, that you'd have a decent chance of getting it done eventually.
Not to say you cant make money off it.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_num...
"The 112 Suomi application enables the automatic delivery of the caller's location information to the emergency service dispatcher (in Finland). Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.
By using this application you agree to the following terms and conditions: http://www.digia.com/PageFiles/112 20Suomi/112-Suomi-app-user's-licence-agreement.pdf Registry extract according to the Personal Information Act: http://www.digia.com/PageFiles/112 Suomi/112-Suomi-app-registry-extract.pdf"