John Oliver shows why 911 emergency call centers are desperately outdated
YouTube/HBO
On Sunday, "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" looked into the lack of support given to 911 dispatchers, and it's quite scary.
Dispatchers get a lot of calls: 240 million a year, according to the show. And though 84 million of those are butt dials, there are still many that are very serious, and because of underfunding, understaffing, and a lack of technology upgrades in the cell phone-obsessed era we live in, depending on what state you live in, the accuracy of the 911 dispatcher finding your location is very low.
In many cases 10%.
That means the Domino's app knows where you're located more often than a 911 dispatcher.
In true John Oliver fashion, he tackles the topic with hilarity and shocking facts, like that the government has set a benchmark hoping to improve 911 so dispatchers can find one out of every five callers by 2021. Wow!
There's been talk of a "next-generation 911" service for a decade, in which dispatchers would be connected to IP-based networks and would even be able to accept video and text messages.
But as Oliver points out, many states have diverted money that's supposed to go into their 911 support to other needs.
Meaning it's still going to be more likely that an Uber can find you faster than an ambulance for the foreseeable future.
Watch the full segment below:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/A-XlyB_QQYs
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