Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Rich Sims Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: In Defense of 911 Service Message-ID: <10187@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 27 Jul 90 08:28:46 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 32 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 522, Message 2 of 7 While this is *not* intended to excuse incompetence or just plain stupidity, the 911 service is not as bad as some of the recent comments would indicate. Consider ... people tend to remember and relate the things that go wrong, not the ones that go right ... which the vast majority of 911 calls appear to do! The system isn't perfect, but then, it was designed by, and is implemented by, less than perfect creatures ... human beings. It is not now, and never will be a 100% infallible system. There will always be the possibility of getting an operator who is new to the job, poorly or incompletely trained, moderately incompetent, overworked, or any of a multitude of other problems. Even if everything works out perfectly on the call, the response may be less than what was desired or necessary, again for one (or several) of a large number of reasons. Unfortunately, the result of any of this is frequently tragic. The system isn't perfect, but it does work, most of the time. As with any other system involving the interaction of several people in a high-stress situation, there are going to be some screw-ups. The best we can hope for is that the respective participants in such screw-ups learn from the problems, and take the necessary steps to improve the response the next time around. Of course, one of those "necessary steps" is to make the facts known, so others can also learn from such cases. However, I suspect that not many of the people actually involved in handling 911 calls are reading this group!