Android Emergency Location Service expands in the US
I mentioned before that your location information isn’t guaranteed to get to help when calling emergency services. This is due to a lot of factors, but the government being behind the technology / rollout can be blamed for most.
In 2016 Google added Emergency Location Services (ELS) to Android. It works the same way Google Maps does, using a combo of barometer, surrounding WiFi, and other methods of location determination to quickly pinpoint you within a radius of about 121 feet. Now T-Mobile is rolling this out to give location to 911 operators in select areas.
Current methods, when they work, that’s a radius of about 522 feet of uncertainty, or it’s positioned you to within a circle with an area of about 856,033 square feet vs the ELS method which is about 46,000 square feet of uncertainty. The new method is about 18.6 times better.
You can read about this from the horse’s mouth at the source link below.
Currently this is being rolled out to T-Mobile, so if you’re on an iPhone, Sprint, or Verizon you’re probably just going to die.
I kid, you’ll just be like me a couple of days ago on a bridge trying to walk the 911 operator how I came to be on a bridge directing traffic away from a lane to prevent them from hitting someone. “No, the bridge over interstate 24, Briley parkway… oh it goes over multiple times? no there are no mile markers here, there’s a Kroger… that doesn’t narrow it down… rrrr”.
Longest few minutes of my week attempting to get a responder out with what seemed like three minutes being wasted on giving directions.
[Google Blog]
