How often do you call 911 or similar emergency number?

[quadraginta]

Twice.

Help me. I've fallen and I can't get up type. Broke my arm on black ice in Jersey City.

The other time I didn't call them but spoke to them because we had a spiffy new phone with hands free and our tabby cat, Tabby, called them just walking on buttons. I walked by and heard a woman's voice on the speaker and asked who was calling only to be yelled at by the operator because she'd already called in the squad car thinking someone was lying injured. The cops weren't thrilled, not so much by the accidental call, but because we were on the top floor of a five story walk-up. Luckily, they didn't ticket us.

Pre-lockscreen days, I'm guessing.

I wonder how someone would calculate the odds of a cat walking on a cell phone and managing to dial just those numbers in that order.

 

[Wolrab]

I have called 911 probably 75 to100 times. The vast .majority for patients in non hospital settings. Personal calls dealt with downed power lines, auto accidents, family emegencies, and a few times being attacked by the ex.

 

[Dr. Keith]

The first time I called 911 they told me I was too far from the hospital and I would have to get a ride in. Tough since the whole reason there were injuries was that we were drunk teenagers driving a truck around a field at night. We decided to sleep on it rather than compound or problems with probable DUI and possible further collisions. No one died that night.

More recently I called because a guy was trying to cross a divided interstate freeway in the middle of the day. That was suicidal at best.

Most recently because as I sat at a light a truck went by in front of me with the driver slumped over the steering wheel apparently unconscious. I watched him weave from the right lane across the middle lane to the left lane and back again as his car nudged off the curb and other drivers just maneuvered around him. I didn't see where it stopped as I was heading the opposite direction.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Pre-lockscreen days, I'm guessing.

I wonder how someone would calculate the odds of a cat walking on a cell phone and managing to dial just those numbers in that order.

I thought so too, but looking at the phone, it turned out it wasn't that hard. Nothing like the astronomical odds one would expect at first thinking of it. There were no multi-key menu selections on those units. You pressed a button that said "Hands Free" and the dial tone came up on the speaker. So, one paw up a bit and a little to the right to step on the 9 and then the left paw up and a tad to the left to the 1 and if your kitty cat weight stays there for a second, it'll dial the 1 twice. I'm sure the odds are at least 3 digits to 1, but not in the million monkeys on a million typewriters* category.

*Aside: That probably needs to be revised. With predictive text and the internet on, I'll bet one monkey could inadvertently start Moby Dick going and get it completed in about 200,000 tries.

 

[LSSBB]

I live in the Chicago South Suburbs. I lived for a while in the Chicago North Suburbs, and in the City in Rogers Park. Before that, in South Bend, Minneapolis, San Diego, and Hawaii.

I have never called 911. Not once. I have never witnessed anything necessitating a 911 call, been subject to it, overheard it. In all over 4 decades where I could have done so.

 

[quadraginta]

I live in the Chicago South Suburbs. I lived for a while in the Chicago North Suburbs, and in the City in Rogers Park. Before that, in South Bend, Minneapolis, San Diego, and Hawaii.

I have never called 911. Not once. I have never witnessed anything necessitating a 911 call, been subject to it, overheard it. In all over 4 decades where I could have done so.

Lucky you.

And I don't mean that facetiously. No personal or family medical emergencies. No accidents in your proximity. No fires. No natural disasters. Etc., etc..

You have led a very fortunate life. (Although mayhap a bit boring. Kidding, Just kidding. )

May it continue in the same vein.

 

[Trebuchet]

Lucky you.

And I don't mean that facetiously. No personal or family medical emergencies. No accidents in your proximity. No fires. No natural disasters. Etc., etc..

You have led a very fortunate life. (Although mayhap a bit boring. Kidding, Just kidding. )

May it continue in the same vein.

Indeed. Had I not called 911, or even waited 1/2 hour, my wife would be dead. It's not just for the police.

 

[Thermal]

Twice, separated by 30 years or so. Once after finding a guy with blood coming out of his head in the middle of the road in the middle of the night. The other when my daughter was hit-and-runned on her bike by a car. I found the car. Probably another 60 or 70 times I really, really should have called for one reason or another.

 

[sts60]

I call a few times a year. I’m a volunteer firefighter/EMT, and do a lot of commuting over D.C.-area highways, so between coming across accidents on the road and responding from home to calls in my neighborhood, I occasionally use it to clue the dispatchers in on what’s actually happening at the scene before the flashing-light cavalry arrives. (Sometimes it even resembles what was dispatched.)

More often, I’m one of the helpful vampires you summon with 911 at 3 AM for your { car wreck | activated smoke detector | stomachache }.

 

[SpitfireIX]

I remembered a couple more incidents. I called a few years ago because I was driving through a rough neighborhood and my front passenger window shattered. I thought it had been shot out. The cops said it didn't look like bullet damage, though. So I think what happened is that someone tried to throw a cherry bomb through my window, which was cracked an inch or two, but missed and blew out the window. I lied and told my mother it had been vandalized while it was parked in front of my cousin's house, because I didn't want her to worry.

Another time I really did discover that my car had been vandalized during the night; I don't recall whether I called 911 or the non-emergency number, though.

I can think of two times when I asked someone else to call. Once I was driving my aforementioned cousin home from babysitting a friend's kids; while we were stopped at a light two guys suddenly got out of their cars and started fighting. So I handed my cousin my phone and told her to call. But they got back in their cars and left before the cops showed up.

The other time I was working as a tutor at the local vocational college, and a student had a medical emergency. I went and asked the receptionist to call 911. She fumbled around and I told her to hurry, which made her flustered and caused her to screw up even more, but eventually she managed to call. I don't remember why we couldn't call directly; I think the phone system might have routed 911 calls to the security desk. I believe the student made a full recovery.

 

[LSSBB]

Lucky you.

And I don't mean that facetiously. No personal or family medical emergencies. No accidents in your proximity. No fires. No natural disasters. Etc., etc..

You have led a very fortunate life. (Although mayhap a bit boring. Kidding, Just kidding. )

May it continue in the same vein.

That's how I see it, luck. I also never got called up in the reserves.

In the first Gulf war I was in a combat zone and aside from combat air traffic controlling, my only action was watching the Missouri fire Tomahawks.

Thanks for the wishes.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I think the poll lacks precision in the "Less than once a year" category. I've never called 911, and it seems that many other posters are in the zero to once in their lives range.

Yeah, the poll at least needed something like a "less than once per decade" option.

 

[Greebo]

Twice, both times for the "other half" - very poorly both times - thankfully OK now.

That makes it around once per 30 years for me

 

[fuelair]

I am a USAian. I have never called 911 in my 48 years on this planet.

As a side note I have never dialed 119 in China either (I always think that it is humorous that the number is "upside-down) on the opposite side of the world).

Actually upside down would be 611. 119 is just reversed!!!

 

[P.J. Denyer]

999 twice, once for a roadside fire and once when a car spun off the road in front of me (strictly speaking the second one I told someone else to call 999 while I helped the people in the car as I was first to get to them).

I've also called the non emergency police number three times in the last ten years or so. Once because there was a small group of people in the grounds of the local church late at night and the church had actually put up a sign asking for this to be reported due to fears of theft of lead, once when I found a twelve inch knife in the grass near a footpath, I wanted to make sure I had a crime number before climbing on my motorbike with a knife of that size just in case I happened to get stopped on the way to the station to hand it in. The last time was to report a pack of about thirty dogs (which had presumably got loose from a local hunt) that were chasing everything in sight and had just poured across a main road, fortunately there were temporary traffic lights for roadworks otherwise they would almost certainly have caused an accident.

 

[Seismosaurus]

I've called the emergency services once in my life.

 

[dann]

Me too. Back in the 1980s, I think. I called an ambulance when I saw a guy fall in the street, hurt his head and stay down, unconscious. He may have been drunk.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I remembered another one. I called when gasoline was running down the street. Fire came, followed the spill. Turned out the garbage truck with a side gas tank punctured it and didn't know it. The spill literally went up and back zigzagging for several blocks before the fire truck caught up with them.

Just light the end of the spill and wait, you'll be to triangulate the origin of the fuel from blocks away.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Just remembered another, I had to call an ambulance for a friend and colleague who took a bite of baclava, announced he had a nut allergy and didn't have an epipen, finished the baclava, said he was fine then passed out in the lobby....


... Believe it or not, I made this genius best man at my wedding.