There’s a good chance that you’ve called 911 and repeatedly tried to spell out your address over a lot of noise or a scratchy phone call. Smartphones have tremendous capabilities that enable them to find anything you need in a flash, and nearby based on your location.
Yet contacting the police is just as difficult as it always was. An upcoming iOS 12 update will include a feature that enables your iPhone to send your location to dispatchers when you call 911.
It is a collaboration between Apple and RapidSOS, in which users’ iPhones send their coordinates to a RapidSOS dispatcher and then forwards it to local emergency response centers. This can eliminate the time wasted trying to spell your address out to ambulance call centers when they could spend that time saving lives.
The RapidSOS service was already available to emergency response centers, but is unfortunately used by less than half of them. Hopefully, this partnership will help increase awareness of such services, as they have the potential to save many lives.
