| Butt calls:
Let's put an end to 'em |
David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2003 |
|
Have you ever picked up your
telephone only to hear noise on the other end? Or maybe you heard bits of
conversation or singing over some static?
IF YOU WERE LUCKY, you recognized the voice of someone you knew.
That's when you realized what had happened: Your friend had accidentally pressed
the redial or speed-dial button on their cellular phone, which then placed a
call to you.
Maybe the phone bumped up against something in a purse or
briefcase, or rubbed up against a seat belt. Or maybe the phone fell on the
floor. Maybe the person just sat on their phone--which explains why some
industry insiders call inadvertent dialing "butt calls."
Often the phone owner doesn't realize what's happening,
and the accidental call keeps being made over and over again. Trying to get the
accidental caller's attention by shouting or pressing one of your touch-tone
keys doesn't work--I know, I've tried. All you can do is hang up and hope you
weren't ignoring something important--like a friend who, for some reason or
another, needed help but couldn't speak.
That's where a funny story turns serious.
It turns out that a huge number of these accidental calls
are placed to local emergency service centers. Why? Because many phones are
factory-programmed with 911 as a speed-dial number. Even when they aren't, many
well-meaning users make 911 a speed key on their own. Some phones even have
special buttons for emergency calls. Press any of these accidentally, and a call
will go out for help that you really don't need.
Larry Hatch, who works for the public safety
communications agency serving Washington County, Oregon (suburban Portland),
collected some of these inadvertent emergency calls on his Web
site. It's easy to laugh at some of these, especially the one of a toilet
flushing.
But then you have to remember that these calls take up the
time of people whose job it is to handle real emergencies. The call-taker at
your community's public safety answering point doesn't know whether you need
help or not. So he or she must listen and try to figure out whether the call is
a real emergency or not. Many times it's obviously an accidental call. But other
times the dispatcher can't be sure and has to sit there listening for ten
minutes or more, just to make sure.
How big a problem is this? Hatch estimates that 20 to 25
percent of 19,000 monthly calls to his agency, which answers all 911 calls in
Washington County, are accidental; estimates for other jurisdictions range up to
30 percent.
Hatch budgets about $8 million annually to answer those
calls. Do the math on how much those calls cost taxpayers in just that one
Oregon county, then extend it out nationally, and we could be spending upwards
of a billion dollars a year just to answer accidental calls to 911.
AND THEN I WONDER about the people who really need
emergency help but can't get it. What if you call 911 on purpose and then have
to wait several minutes while a 911 operator tries to figure out whether or not
a butt call is a real emergency or not? I'm not saying this happens every day,
but with such high call volumes, bad things are bound to happen eventually.
Then there's a more hypothetical--but frightening--danger:
Currently, when a 911 call comes in but then hangs up, it's fairly common
practice nationwide for the dispatcher to call the number back. If he or she
gets a suspicious response, or none at all, police are sent to investigate.
Dispatchers can send officers to wire-line hang-up calls
because their systems can pinpoint where the call originated. Similar
capabilities are now being added to wireless 911 systems around the country,
enabling the dispatch console to display a cellular caller's geographic
location.
But what happens when a quarter of those calls are bogus?
Even if you knew the exact location of all those accidentally dialed handsets,
there aren't enough police officers to check them all out.
Now that you know the scope of the problem, here's what
you can do to help:
- Unprogram any emergency speed dials on your cellular telephone. These are
open "one-key" speed dials, where pressing and holding a single number key
will place the call. Commonly, 911 is assigned to the '9' key.
Learn to lock your cellular telephone keypad when you're not actually
using it. You will still be able to receive calls, but you won't accidentally
place calls, to 911 or anybody else.
Some phones have a special "911 mode," which defeats butt calls by
requiring an additional key to be pressed before completing a 911 call. If
your phone has this feature, use it.
Owners of flip phones or any device with a protected keyboard are already
butt call-free, since there's no way to press the dialing keys when the phone
is closed. Just remember to always close the phone when you're not using it.
IN THE LONG TERM, it's up to handset manufacturers to make it
more difficult to accidentally place calls. AT&T Wireless, for example,
began working with its handset maker three years ago to remove 911 from
pre-programmed speed dials. Yet older phones, and handsets from other vendors,
still have the problem, and that will take time to fix. Until it is, we have to
do something about it ourselves.
The whole issue of accidental cell calls sounds kind of
silly, especially when you call them butt calls. But to your police, fire, and
EMS agencies, they get in the way of helping people in real need. And, of
course, the money spent answering these calls could be put to much better use.
So do me a favor: Share this column with as many cell
phone-wielding friends as possible. Make a hard copy and post it on your
company's bulletin board. Link to this page from your Web site. I'm adding a
link to my e-mail signature.
The bottom line is simple: Let's put an end to butt
calls.
________________________________
Changes to your subscription (unsubs, nomail, digest) can be made by going to
http://sandboxmail.net/mailman/listinfo/sndbox_sandboxmail.net
Add your opinion
