How do you give directions to the fire service when you do not know what road you are on?

Exactly. And good luck explaining that on the phone in an emergency situation:

'that's wiv, no wiv wiv a D'

etc.

Theo

Don't worry it will be out by the weekend when storm whatever arrives

Can we invent our own ?.

Where would 'Oil Spiv Farrage' take us ?

I'm waiting for Simon to pop up and remind us how fantastic his Iridium phone is.

Brian Gaff explained on 08/08/2019 :

Last time I did a 999 out in the wilds, the operator was not able to accept a Lat/Long.

The 'three little words' system is free for the user, but those accepting the three words need to subscribe. On the web site, they list which authorities subscribe to the system, Yorkshire is one. I recently downloaded it and I have checked it a few times, it has always been very accurate when I have tried it. It is even accurate wondering around my own property.

Which is just stupid. Out here it maybe the only way to locate a moorland fire some where in 50 sq miles of road and track free moorland... Even on the road between South Tyne Dale and Teesdale there is 6 miles from the last house in South Tyne Dale to the first one at the Top of Teesdale. It's not without reason that this area is know as "Englands last Wilderness" and with 6 of the highest roads also the "Roof of England".

A few years back I reported a gas leak, This wasnt just a smell of gas you could hear the gas escaping from 50 yards away, it was a major pipeline gong in to (or out) of a gas works. I gave them the address & town. I explained this to emergency services and then got pissed of with all the other questions so told her " I have reported and given address, this is serious, do what you want" It took about half hour for services to investigate and then evacuated all for half mile with overnight accommodation.

Bouvet Island - at least, that is where he should be.

Where you are, phone masts are thick in the air, so easy to triangulate. The OP is talking about being in the wild.

Browser location is useless for me in Surrey because I'm on BT wired broadband, and my IP address is often in Kent.

I suspect a signal strong enough to make a call will be enough to access what3words.com

It is no toy, unless you're a child. It's an easy, effective way to provide a location within 10m.

Change one number or letter in an OS grid...........

Do you want it to work? If so, do you have an android phone?

NGRs seem archaic compared to lat/long in this context. If someone calls for help they are likely to have access to GPS, not an OS map

I suppose our quaint British NGR is only an algorithm away, but why complicate things?

///monks.adjust.matter is our local tip ///monk.adjust.matter is Powstancow Slaskich, Zernica, Poland

So what you are confirming is a small slip is going to be very obvious.

The problem is that you usually end up talking to someone that is not local and doesn't know where anything is. You can only tell them the road number if you know it.

If it's a fire, there's usually smoke to guide. Anything else is a problem.

Google earth has got to be the best way to find a street name.

I used to drive a minibus and on one journey taking people home one lady on the bus looked very unwell. I phoned the emergency services and said I was on the A321 between Twyford, Berkshire and Wokingham just south of a road called Broad Hinton. I thought this was fairly clear. But then the operator asked where Twyford was and where Wokingham was. So I ended up having to say that Twyford was about halfway between Reading and Maidenhead and then the same thing for Wokingham. And all the time my passenger was looking more and more distressed. Can't say I was very impressed at all with the call handling aspect. Once the ambulance services arrived they were of course excellent.

Lawrie

Matches my experience. There seems to be a complete inability to look anything up on any sort of online mapping facility.

Tim