Last week the Ottawa Police announced that in 2009 they received 23,000 accidental 911 calls, mainly due to “pocket dialing”. Another stat has been released of these unintentional calls – Edmonton 911 operators receive an average of 1,000 calls a day of which 700 are from mobile phones and 230 are legitimate emergencies (33%).
911 operator supervisor Kim Pudde said “It’s about two thirds of the calls we get from cell phones are non emergency calls. We get everything from wrong numbers to believe it or not, prank calls, a lot of calls that are made in error, and the famous 911 pocket dial from cell phones…. When we’re dealing with high volume of calls… we don’t know which of those in there are real emergency calls, we have to go through them in the order they come in so if we have two thirds of the people calling into 911 who don’t have emergencies, people who do may be waiting longer than they need to”.
One way to overcome “pocket dialing” is to get yourself a case.
Source: Leader Post
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
