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What3Words aids in Beach Rescue


loriusgarrulus
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I used this for the first time when I was on the bike, which had decided to misfire, in a large motorway service station carpark. The address postcode only gave the admin area's location, the other side of the motorway, but, with what 3 words, the breakdown service located me precisely.

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This one's controversial. For the vast majority of occasions it works fine, but there have been high profile errors - and errors that aren't explainable, which is even more concerning. Keswick MRT were called out by a couple who'd come across a lone walker with a suspected broken ankle and fired off their (correctly written) W3W, which put them near Braithwaite. Phone tracking tech told a different story and they were found near Green Gable - ten miles away!

Base Brown (9) - Keswick Mountain Rescue (keswickmrt.org.uk)

A researcher found thousands of examples where the codes were incredibly similar and close together ( circle.goal.leader and circle.goal.leaders are less than 2km apart along the River Thames) but more concerning are the ones like stream.rivers.abode and steam.rivers.abode both in South Yorkshire but 50km apart - enough of a time lag for a serious casualty to go from a serious casualty to a fatality before the error's understood and corrected.

App used by emergency services under scrutiny - BBC News

It's also predicated on using your smartphone and having enough signal to access data to load the app - and for your phone to have an accurate enough position to give the correct W3W. 

And it works in 2d, so if the position is wrong by half a km as the crow flies, that could easily put you on the wrong side of a mountain to your rescuers and so completely invisible and several miles away from being accessible to them. 

It works for a lot of situations, but if you're going into remoter areas, where signal's patchy and rescue difficult, having a full understanding of how to give co ordinates and a separate device to give it to you so you're not relying on your phone's battery to constantly give you position, is a far better option. Then you can give both!

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5 hours ago, amateur said:

I used this for the first time when I was on the bike, which had decided to misfire, in a large motorway service station carpark. The address postcode only gave the admin area's location, the other side of the motorway, but, with what 3 words, the breakdown service located me precisely.

I thought your bike came with its own dedicated Rickman breakdown service vehicle, that follows you everywhere for the inevitable 😂

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21 minutes ago, Jaymo said:

I thought your bike came with its own dedicated Rickman breakdown service vehicle, that follows you everywhere for the inevitable 😂

Ho ruddy ho.

The occasional glitch is far outweighed by the sublime riding experience.

16 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

I didn't know Land Rover made Motorbikes!  

Not a bad analogy. The Rickman off-road bikes were, like Landrovers, the best off-roaders available and generally very reliable.

The odd glitch that I have with mine is a direct result of my fitting a detuned race engine in it for the road.

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