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Comment by piker | Hacker News Reader

Don't understand this idea. In UK there's a dozen or so magic numbers with one for each special crisis that you're supposed to memorize. Some are straightforward: 111 (non emergency health), 999 (emergency), but then there's 101, 112, 105? and you're supposed to dial them in certain circumstances. It seems this takes some triage load off, but it also seems like the path from "what's your emergency?" "this is not an emergency" to switching the line should be straightforward in 2022. Doing that would enable citizens to have a single point of contact for any kind of interaction with the state from crisis to reporting a power outage to paying a parking ticket.

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You can already call either 911 or the ten digit suicide hotline humber about suicide. 988 is just shorthand for the full suicide hotline number.

You won’t get in trouble if you call 911 about suicide, but if they think it’s not urgent they may point you to other resources rather than dispatch emergency services. The suicide hotline provides non-emergency resources but can’t emergency dispatch.

Perhaps in the future, more 911 centers will be expanded to include non-emergency suicide resources, but most or all don’t have that right now.

112 exists because it's the emergency number in some other countries. So it's smart to have it in the UK as well so foreigners can still call for help even not knowing the local convention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_numbe...

111 is also the emergency number in some countries - here in NZ some time back in the '30s some post office functionary bought a while bunch of dial phones on the cheap - because they had the numbers on the dial the other way around from what was becoming the standard elsewhere - hence 111 as the emergency number - worked great for 40-50 years until international direct dial became a thing ....

these days we accept 111 911 999 112 as synonyms

I thought you all just had one number for everything! 0118 999 881 999 119 7253

https://youtu.be/ab8GtuPdrUQ

Missing country code, you are instead supposed to call: +44 118 999 881 999 119 725 3.

(1) it reduces non-emergency load on emergency dispatch (or, if you don't route immediately to emergency dispatch, delay in emergencies reaching emergency dispatch.)

(2) Emergency dispatch may automatically dispatch police/fire/EMS. That may be counterproductive to (and discourage calls for) some other events that a ready access number is desired for.

(1) "is this an emergency?" yes/no must be close to O(1)

(2) is this done in practice or just hypothetical?

That would add overhead to every call. The first question that they ask is: “911. Where is the emergency?”

The first question that they ask is: “911. Where is the emergency?”

That varies from PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) to PSAP. Local policy dictates what the first thing said to the caller is. And while I believe it is the case that most PSAP's use "where is your emergency" as their first question these days, some still use "what is your emergency" instead. This is one of those things that people who work in public safety (especially dispatchers) love to have religious arguments about.

And just to go back to the point about emergency / non-emergency calls: people call 911 for all sorts of shit that isn't an emergency. And while I've been gone from dispatching for a while, from what I understand, this problem has only gotten worse over the years. Unfortunately 911 has gone from "the number I call if somebody is dying or something is on fire" to "the number I call if there is anything going on that I don't understand or don't like, and want to demand that Somebody Needs To Do Something About It." :-(

Source: former 911 dispatcher and firefighter, and have called 911 a handful of times over the years.

Have you seen "0118 999 881 999 119 725 3"[1] in IT Crowd?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ

I have it memorized for emergencies.

The one aspect that stands out to me is that it offloads liability for bad triage to the caller.

Please press 1 if you are a danger to yourself or others, Please press 2...

Press one for english. Presione dos para español.

There probably is a IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menu for emergency services somewhere, but it seems a bit too surreal for me.

112 is the european emergency number. If you have an issue while on vacation, only remember this. The Brussel effect made it international, and now i think most touristic destination use this number. Also, with a European operator, calling 112 will redirect you to local emergency numbers (let's say 911 if you are currently in the US).

> that you're supposed to memorize

If the situation you are in means that you don’t have time, ability, means, or mental capacity to Google for the right number then the right number to use is 999.

It’s a self-solving problem.

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