Economy
A Growing Problem for 9-1-1 Dispatchers: Butt-Dials
Getting rid of accidental emergency calls could save San Francisco more than $2 million yearly, says an official.
Take a moment to reach back and give your backside a righteous thwack. Don’t worry—it (or at least one of its friends) probably deserves the smack, as butt-dialing is taking up an annoyingly large amount of 9-1-1 dispatchers’ time.
That’s according to a research paper from Google’s “9-1-1 Team,” whose analysis of computer-aided dispatch calls shows false cries for help are a scourge in San Francisco. The researchers, working with the Department of Emergency Management and the city’s public-private Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, discovered that the two most common code calls from the past couple of years were “miscellaneous” and “unknown”—classifications that likely included a literal butt-load of dials.