I honestly thought I was the first person to think of this for the 911 emergency service, but after I googled the term "911 text messaging", I learned that I was wrong.

Apparently there are some places that already have this, and that completely stole my thunder. But it is a good concept for those situations when you can't talk on the phone in emergency situations.

911 text messaging sounds like a good idea to me - for the most part, and in specific situations, of course. If there's any way that I can have a spoken conversation with emergency services, I'm going to go that route because it's faster and easier. For me, anyway. I don't text at 60+ WPM like some people *grins*

However it'd be good to have some Alarm buttons on your mobile that sends immediate pre-set messages to 911. Say you're about to be mugged or held up at gun-point, you can alert the authorities at the press of a button and then 911 should be able to more or less pin-point your location based on the network cell you're in.. at least upto a certain degree of proximity. Then the rest is upto the cops to rush down and try to locate you.

Yeah nice though, good idea. But just think about it, when you want some help from 911 I dont think anyone here is going to text message them saying "Help, Help! I am in trouble." Like miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG said may be setting a set of keys as emergency numbers is a good idea. But still I doubt if anyone will really gonna TEXT MESSAGE 911 for help.
Anyway it was really nice thinking, you reall thought about from no where.
Good work.

I think this type of service may have a lot of pros and cons. The pros maybe it offers a silent way to contact the authorities to come to your aid, but the process of contacting in the form of text may be a little too inconveniant, compared to getting a direct response from the 911 service, so this might be the disadvantage. Im not quite so sure, this feature can have many different uses depending on the situation. But it never hurts to have another feature of contacting the proper authorities more discreetly.

Well I don’t know what it is like in America but 999 (the equivalent service) is one of the few numbers you can dial free from your mobile. So I would certainly call well before I would bother to text (that said…my texting ability is abominably slow).

As far as having an emergency message I had this really great service at my old work. As we had to walk alone through rather dodgy areas of Glasgow they gave you a mobile with a GPS tracker, you would enter codes before you went through the area, like 401 or something and then again when you left, if you phoned or typed in another code during this period they would alert the police. I can’t quite remember the entire process as I fortunately never had to use it, but I remember that it did eliminate any fears.

I'm up for this idea! Personally, I'd hate to be charged 29 cents (or whatever Cingular charges for txt) just to make an emergency call. I can't txt a fast rate so I'd rather speak to someone.

An emergency button would be nice! I mean, they could put GPS software on the mobiles and when an incoming call comes in, it relays your current location and then the police come.

[N]F

Those are quite nice ideas, don't know about 911, but in my country you can call for any emergency by number 112 on a cell phone and it is free, you even can do it without putting a sim card and abusing the service with prank calls, which in my opinion is stupid. And having the ability to send text messages SMS or even MMS for free to emergency numbers like 911 or 112 etc. would be a good feature, just imagine you are running away from a murderer and you hide in a closet or some cellar and if you wanted to call the police you would make a lot of noise.. sending a text message would save your life, but it can take quite long to post the address, location.. can the police get your coordinates or something ?

One rather bad thing about it is that there always will be idiots who will abuse the service with prank SMS calls and sometimes, the police might not be serious about them. But most phones need a sim card to be placed to write text messages, but I know some which can work without sim cards. :S

It is a nice idea but has to many cons.
For example:
- If you are being held at gunpoint you wouldn't be able to text 'hlp im bein hld at gnpnt' (Help I'm being held at gunpoint) and send the message without him/her realising.
- Sometimes (At night I find) there can be a delay of several minutes or even hours before the message will be recieved.

Of course if there was a button that automatically sent a preset message it eliminates the first scenario and as for the second one they could be given top priority and directly sent without any delays. Ahhh, the possibilities.

I think you wouldn't be able to call with your cell phone the police and say that you're in trouble too



But how would the police know where to look ? You would need to send your current coordinates with your message, so your phone for example would need to support GPS technology. And yes, the SMS getting an hour or later might be a problem, but all police operators might be taken too (I doubt it, unless it was a contest)