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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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17 minutes ago, billytheghillie said:

Why use a app in first place. Why didnt they check tide times before setting out? A lot of numpties in this country!

No mention of their age, but the reports say girls and not women. None of us were paragons of common sense all of the time when we were young.

 

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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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