Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance are urging people to download an app which'll make it easier for them to find you in case of an emergency
The "What three words" app generates three random words- which paramedics can use to find your precise location.
Last updated 7th Jul 2023
As Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance brace for the busy Summer season, they're encouraging us to download an app, which'll make it easier for them to find you in an emergency.
"What three words" - generates three random words - which can then be used to pinpoint your exact location.
New research shows that nearly two–thirds of UK adults aged 25-34 (62%) are planning to go on a trip, holiday, or to an event in a destination that they’ve never been to before this summer, on a mixture of day trips and sampling the best of what Britain has to offer with staycations.
In fact, just over two-fifths of UK adults (41%) will be on the road more often in the summer to visit their family and friends, with 1 in 3 (38%) admitting they will be driving on unfamiliar roads when travelling this summer.
When it comes to planning our summer adventures, over a third (38%) of us rely on using the outdated method of a postcode to get where we need to go, as more than 1 in 10 (16%) admit to getting lost from using a map app to guide us on the road.
While our adventurous side seems to take over in the summer months, concerningly, 4 in 10 drivers (42%) are worried that if they had to call the emergency services when on a trip, they wouldn’t be able to explain exactly where they were.
Not being able to relay your exact location can impede the ability of the emergency services to offer help in an emergency situation, with potentially dangerous consequences. To combat this, the UK’s emergency services are encouraging people to download the what3words app as a way of informing emergency services of their exact location in case of an emergency.
George Reiger is a Pilot for the Air Ambulance and tells us how important knowing your exact location can be:
"The quality of the information you pass on to a dispatcher on 999 is really important. Sometimes people are only capable of passing over a postcode, which, all that does is send us to the middle of that post code area, and whilst we're in the air it can be - in some postcodes - quite a large area that we need to start to spread out and look for things.
"In my personal experience, the largest difference in location to an accident to the grid, was 10 miles.
"So we started looking in the completely wrong place for this, which for us is another 3-4 minutes flight in a different direction."
"I'd say, especially in really rural areas, if you think of the size of a three metre by three metre grid, we can practically tell which tree someone is sat under that's been hurt, rather than just having, even a few fields to look across.
"It's so hyper accurate we'll be able to see exactly where someone would be."
He also added that the app can help all other emergency services too:
"So what 3 words is a mapping software, that you can get as an app on your phone which will give you an accurate location down to a three metre square grid and is predominantly used for people who aren't sure of where they are.
"So when someone calls 999 and they pass on details to a dispatcher, the quality of the information you pass on is vital - and for a lot of people, it might be their first time calling 999, or they might be in quite a stressful situation, and a lot of people who travel on our roads aren't actually particularly sure of their exact location.
"So an app software such as what 3 words will give your location as just three unique words which you can pass on and our dispatchers use that."
what3words provides a simple way to communicate precise locations. It has divided the globe into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique combination of three words: a what3words address.
The app is free to download and works offline, making it an ideal tool for people who need help in areas with poor data connection such as national parks, campsites, and beaches.
It’s used by over 85% of the UK’s police, ambulance and fire services and proved to be an invaluable tool in the emergency response toolkit.