Back in the ancient days of landlines , it was pretty hard to make an accidental phone call . The invention of electric cell phones , however , show in the age of the inadvertent headphone call , affectionately dubbed the “ goat dial . ” In the causa of old prison cell phones with buttons , the occasional pocket telephone dial was moderately much inescapable , since there were n’t layers of countersign and fingerprint identifications to cultivate through before a call could be placed .
For the most part , the lock screen on today ’s smartphones have reduced the number of accidental call we place . But there ’s still one numeral we can always call without first unlock our phones : 911 .
fit in to Slate , smartphones have drastically increased the number of unwilled emergency phone calls we make — and it ’s a huge problem for 911 dispatcher .
San Francisco , for instance , has insure a 28 percent increase in 911 calls since 2011 . Aninvestigation by Googlefound that the surge in cry was due not to crime , but to butt dials . In fact , about 20 percent of all emergency brake calls in the city last year were accidental .
For already - overworked 911 starter , figuring out whether calls are accidental is a grueling and frustrating task . Almost 40 percent of the employee at one San Francisco call center identified accidental call — which each take approximately one second and 14 seconds to follow up on — as the biggest “ pain point ” of their job . For exigency dispatcher , unintended calls are a immense waste of time and resources , and make it harder to respond to real emergencies .
fortuitously , there are a phone number of potential root to the butt dialing epidemic . In the UK , for instance , emergency call center want caller to bid “ 55 ” if the call is knowing . FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has also propose wireless provider send a text to inadvertent 911 dialers . But until a solution is adopted , butt dials will continue to be a huge pain in the , well , butt for emergency dispatcher .
[ h / t : Slate ]
