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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

How so? I ask as a paramedic of 14 years, now retired.

If EMS has to "search you out" so does the drone.

At least in my County, we actually get very good triangulation info from 911. It was very rare that Dispatch told us they only had Level 2(IIRC) location info (which might be to several hundred feet).

FAR more common was people who actually told us the -wrong- location. Car accidents that were several miles up the road from their location. Saying Blah St SE when they meant Blah Rd NE, etc.

Drones don't solve for that problem. They're going to the wrong location, too.

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> If EMS has to "search you out" so does the drone.

The point is that the drone is fast enough to arrive first, and do the searching so that you don't have to. It's just one of many possible scenarios.

I totally understand the argument that this might not be the most effective use of money, but I honestly don't understand the lack of appreciation for the number of places this could be used effectively.

I want to see who is in a location. I get a plant to call 911, which triggers Flock drones in the general area and scans the faces of everyone it can find. I get that info from Flock.

There are always security concerns and exploits. Some crazy gamers call 911 swat attacks on people; that doesn't mean that the police shouldn't have guns, or that 911 should be turned off.

Yes, the drones should be secure. Yes there should be measures to make sure that they're not abused. But none of that takes away from anything i've said, which is ONLY to point out the situations where they could be useful. And people seem to be having a very negative visceral reaction to even considering the possibility.

Also, i'm not recommending or supporting Flock, just the concept of drone use in general.

Modern fire departments (including my own) are already using drones, and have found that the best use for them is not "how quickly can we find someone", but thermal imaging from above on structure fires.

> and do the searching so that you don't have to

The searching that we did just isn't really solved by drones (and I love them, some of my best photography is from a drone). It's things like "obscured house numbers on a street", "ambiguous address", not "person lost in a forest". Now if you want to talk about the use of drones for SAR? Absolutely. But for the vast majority of 911 "attempt to locate", getting there quickly is rarely the issue. We can get there quickly and still spend minutes figuring out that you're actually living on a flag property (where your home is behind another, but you share a driveway).

Yeah, I'm sure they wouldn't be helpful in every call. But the EMT user above talked about sometimes a caller giving the wrong location of a car accident. That's a clear case where a drone quickly on site could warn that crews need to be diverted elsewhere. But if it is just the occasional case where they'd be helpful, that makes them even less economically attractive.

As for fire services, in my city there is always a lead SUV vehicle (I think a captain or supervisor) who is a few blocks ahead of the actual heavy trucks. Presumably to get someone on site as quickly as possible; which made me believe that a drone could assist in that role. But I accept what you say, that there are too many limitations for it to help much, even if it can arrive quicker.

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