3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Rely On 911 To Know Your Location
1. Many police stations are not equipped to locate calls by cell phone.

This comes as a shock to most people, considering that we use GPS location data every day for apps like Maps, Facebook, or Yelp. But you’re phone’s ability to send it’s location is not the issue — the problem is, many emergency services departments don’t have the ability to receive that data.
In an emergency, that can be a big problem for people on cell phones. And as more and more people leave their landlines in favor of cell phones, this problem will continue to grow. As Curtis Darnell — 911 dispatcher and Chief for 28 years — explains:
Location is the single most important piece of information in an emergency call… the only way the system works is when callers decide to make the difference by calling for help or to help someone else. Don’t depend on cell location technology to do the heavy lifting; your story and ability to answer the dispatchers questions accurately are way more important than your cell phone’s capability.
Let’s imagine how this works in real life. Say you’re walking down a city block, or through a residential neighborhood — do you know what cross-streets you’re between? Would you stake your life on it? Or perhaps you’re driving down a long country road — how would you describe that location to dispatch? (Tip — “I’m near a big tree where the road curves left” will not cut it!) What if you’re in a taxi or public transportation, and don’t know exactly where you are?
With the current system, the above circumstances could leave you in serious trouble. The personal safety app MySafetyNetworks solves this problem by displaying your GPS coordinates on-screen during an SOS alert. With MySafetyNetworks, if you’re talking to emergency services, you can read them your precise location right from the display of your phone — cutting response times down from minutes to seconds.
2. Triangulation location technologies can take 6+ minutes to get a location reading with hundreds of feet of inaccuracy.

An FCC estimate states that about 10,000 lives could be saved each year by even a one-minute reduction in emergency response times. Emergency services use cell phone triangulation to locate you, which can take over 6 minutes, and leave huge amounts of room for inaccuracy. Cell tower triangulation creates a large estimated area (around 2 football fields), but doesn’t pinpoint your location exactly — you could be anywhere in that area.

In a real emergency, you may not have 6 minutes to wait around while a dispatcher figures out your location. Having your GPS data readily available could be the difference between a close call and a life threatening emergency.
3. Knowing your actual location takes a lot more than knowing your relative location.

It’s important to be on the phone with emergency services to give them an accurate location — if they cannot find you, they won’t be able to help you.
In a wooded area or a crowded city, a few hundred feet could make an enormous difference. Think about how many apartments, offices, restaurants, stores, and alleys are within two football fields (600 ft) of a city block in any major metropolitan area. How are first responders going to find you?
It’s up to you to make sure emergency responders can locate you. MySafetyNetworks can drastically improve response times by giving you the opportunity to tell a dispatcher your GPS coordinates.
MySafetyNetworks has another feature that can be essential in locating you during an emergency call. MySafetyNetworks will send an SOS with your GPS location to friends and family through text, by email, and via social networks. If you are unable to talk, your roommate or family member may be able to reach emergency services and give them the incredibly important information they need to find you. That can be your apartment number, who you are with, or where you were headed when something happened.
Be prepared for emergency with MySafetyNetworks — available for iPhone here on the app store: Personal Safety & Emergency SOS
Sources:
1. https://www.quora.com/If-I-call-911-will-the-dispatcher-know-my-location
2. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/22/cellphone-911-lack-location-data/23570499/
