THis problem has rattled around for some years.  The Ramblers started to pull together some data and what they found is rather worrying.  So they have now launched a campaign, see http://www.ramblers.org.uk/Campaigns+Policy/999_campaign for more details plus information on the problems they had reported to them.

Worrying that so much reliance is placed on technology not quite up to the job!

The technology is up to the job, but the system design is shit.

I've come across the problem myself.

Myself and my partner Karen were on a walk in the Peak and met a couple of other walkers, one of which had a suspected fractured ankle. Luckliy this was a hundred metres or so from a nearby main road but miiles from any town or village. While myself and the other walker carried the one with th ebroken ankle to th eroadside, my partner dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance. The operator was offered a grid reference but wanted a post code. We explained that we were in the niddle of open moorland and were on such and such an A road so many hundred metres south from the junction with another such and such A road and so many miles from Buxton.

This was still no good - they HAD to have a post code. Then there was a debate over which County we were in as we were near the Derbyshire/Cheshire border.

After many minutes during which we tried to explain that there were no buildings other anthing else except moorland and no post code, we were told that an ambulance was on the way. Of course we could both hear and see the ambulance many hundreds of metres away as it approached and easily flagged it down.

It was a good job that the incident wasn't extremely urgent such as a heart attack, etc because a good many minutes wer wasted.

Joust out of interest, how would the ambulance service cope with attendening road traffic accident at the same spot? would the police and fire service respond differently? 

This problem has only really come about since the advent of the mobile phone. Before then, you would have had to find a public phone or a nearby house with a phone, and the locations of both  I suspect would have been fairly easy to identify. The delays in finding a phone to use might well have been much greater that the time wasted asking for a postcode!

Peter Burgess said:

This problem has only really come about since the advent of the mobile phone. Before then, you would have had to find a public phone or a nearby house with a phone, and the locations of both  I suspect would have been fairly easy to identify. The delays in finding a phone to use might well have been much greater that the time wasted asking for a postcode!

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Nothing to do with mobile phones. The ambulance crew are depending on a GPS/Satnav system which requires a post code.

Our caving hut is not visible from the road and shares the same post code with several farms and all are approached from various roads so even with a post code, the ambulance may be delayed significantly trying to find any one of these properties if depending solely on post code.

I suspect in the past the ambulance crew were more dependant on maps to find many rural locations.

Don't cave rescues generally take a long time?

[proddy stick]
If so, in most cases ambulances will therefore have masses of time to arrive and even then the medics will most likely have to hang around for at least an hour or more, while four fire engines, a helicopter and the mountain rescue team turn up ahead of MCR.
[/proddy stick]

Goatchurch is BS40 7AT and Swildon's is BA5 3BE, by the way (or near as dammit), but I speck the regulars already know these off by heart. 

My observations concerning the delay of having to find a phone in days of yore put this problem into perspective. There is the technology to pinpoint an incident today and it should be used. But to suggest that the delay is a new phenomenon is too simplistic. I suspect the mobile phone has sped up the response to incidents in recent years far more than any current delay caused by technological incompetence. The campaign is valid but sometimes we forget how lucky we are to have the use of modern inventions. There was a recent mountain incident when a photo taken by a party stuck high in the hills allowed the Mountain RO to work out where they were. That photo probably saved someone from a severe dose of hypothermia, if they were lucky!

Peter Burgess said:

My observations concerning the delay of having to find a phone in days of yore put this problem into perspective. There is the technology to pinpoint an incident today and it should be used. But to suggest that the delay is a new phenomenon is too simplistic. I suspect the mobile phone has sped up the response to incidents in recent years far more than any current delay caused by technological incompetence. The campaign is valid but sometimes we forget how lucky we are to have the use of modern inventions. There was a recent mountain incident when a photo taken by a party stuck high in the hills allowed the Mountain RO to work out where they were. That photo probably saved someone from a severe dose of hypothermia, if they were lucky!

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The delay, as you say, is not a new phenomenon and yes, having a mobile phone (and a strong enough signal to make a 999 call which will be routed to any mobile carrier even if you're phone is registered with another) undoubtedly speeds things up in terms of requesting help.

The point being made that if you have no post code to give, but do have an accurate grid reference, then there will be a totally avoidable delay, as we experienced in my description of the incident above. If the walker had suffered a heart attack as opposed to a broken ankle then the totally avoidable delay might have resulted in an unnecessary death.

Rant, rant, campaign campaign. The ramblers do like a good rant followed by a bit of a campaign.

It all comes down to economics. What is the cost of installing a nation-wide emergency system that accepts GPS co-ordinates and I suppose OS co-ordinates if they are different. Compared with the cost of a ambulance. Once this is known someone (not me) can do a cost benefit analysis of the choice between a a co-ordinate based system and extra ambulances.

I'm only guessing but I would expect putting an extra ambulance into some under resourced ambulance station would save more lives than the co-ordinate system.

Please let me know if I am again ruining a good argument ( albeit a five minute one) with common sense and logic.

It's not just outdoor pursuits that have this problem. It affects the railways, too...

http://www.raib.gov.uk/sites/raib/latest_news/news_archive/news_archive_2010/100902_pn_whitehall_west_jn.cfm

darren said:

It all comes down to economics. What is the cost of installing a nation-wide emergency system that accepts GPS co-ordinates and I suppose OS co-ordinates if they are different.

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The South West Ambulance Trust admitted it cost them ?1800 to buy the software.  And on the other side, there has only been one death so far, we await the result of the inquiry to see if the delay affected the outcome.

cap 'n chris said:

Don't cave rescues generally take a long time?  Goatchurch is BS40 7AT

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Thanks for that, Burrington Combe was the scene of one of these post code demands back in around 2004.  I recall they ended up using the police force to get the ambualnce.

Bob Smith said:

Joust out of interest, how would the ambulance service cope with attendening road traffic accident at the same spot? would the police and fire service respond differently? 

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The police forces do have systems to cope.  I gather this is not true of Fire Services from some of the entries on the Ramblers site.

paul said:

The ambulance crew are depending on a GPS/Satnav system which requires a post code.
I suspect in the past the ambulance crew were more dependant on maps to find many rural locations.

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If the ambulances are solely depending upon Sat Navs then I wonder what is their back up plan when the USA goes to war and interferes with the GPS signal?

darren said:

Please let me know if I am again ruining a good argument ( albeit a five minute one) with common sense and logic.

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Nope, you are not, using common sense and logic that is. GPS systems have used OS coordinates and UTM coordinates since Pontius was a Pilot. It would be a simple matter of software for the ambulance system to be upgraded to take these as well as post codes.

Wouldn't have cost SFA if it had been specified when the system was put out to tender. All it would have required was for the person who wrote the spec to have been aware of the country outside the M25.

Actually, thinking about it further. The postcode link back to the satnav system requires the former to be linked to UTM, 'cos the satellites haven't a fecking clue what UK postcodes mean.

Changing the interface - and doing this back at base rather than on the individual vehicles 'cos that's where the info is inputted before being transferred over a wireless data link to the vehicle- would surely be a very simple programming matter.

paul said:

The point being made that if you have no post code to give, but do have an accurate grid reference, then there will be a totally avoidable delay, as we experienced in my description of the incident above. If the walker had suffered a heart attack as opposed to a broken ankle then the totally avoidable delay might have resulted in an unnecessary death.

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Yes, Paul. I do understand this.

If the ambulances are solely depending upon Sat Navs then I wonder what is their back up plan when the USA goes to war and interferes with the GPS signal?
[/quote]

Why shouldn't they , after all it IS their system .
  Far too many , both individuals and institutions ( not to mention the stupid and the lazy  :-\ ) have come to rely on what is, essentially, a tool of the United States Military, they put it up to guide their weapons onto targets, (OK, so their track record of "Blue on Blue's is legendary even with it ), not  to make life easier for the rest of the human race, right or wrong, it ain't ours,

from wikipedia

"GPS is owned and operated by the United States Government as a national resource. Department of Defense (USDOD) is the steward of GPS. "

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Restrictions_on_civilian_use

Perhaps, in  light of this, back up procedures , such as basic map reading, should be considered, I'll bet an O.S. map of the local area wouldn't be all that costly.

Slug said:

Why shouldn't they , after all it IS their system .
  Far too many , both individuals and institutions ( not to mention the stupid and the lazy  :-\ ) have come to rely on what is, essentially, a tool of the United States Military, they put it up to guide their weapons onto targets, (OK, so their track record of "Blue on Blue's is legendary even with it ), not  to make life easier for the rest of the human race, right or wrong, it ain't ours,

from wikipedia

"GPS is owned and operated by the United States Government as a national resource. Department of Defense (USDOD) is the steward of GPS. "

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Restrictions_on_civilian_use

Perhaps, in  light of this, back up procedures , such as basic map reading, should be considered, I'll bet an O.S. map of the local area wouldn't be all that costly.

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We will no longer rely on USDOD when Europe's Galileo GPS system is up and running in 2013.

It makes sense for emergency vehicles to make use of GPS systems to find addresses quickly in urban locations but there needs to be an alternative to just accepting post codes in rural locations.

Far too sensible!
O. G.

Far too reliant on technology, what IF there's a serious problem with any gps-system, do they train for such eventualities?