Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

Three places I am very much looking forward to going this summer, especially since last year's were Nigel Manselled....

hardon.jerk.splooge.gobshite
enema.manpaste.jerk.randy
syphillis.booty.trousersnake.tart
 


The King of Um said:
If you replaced What3Words with a string of numbers, I think you'd be just as likely to get people mangling them, transposing numbers, missing out a number or whatever. On balance, it's probably helped rescue services find many people than there's been an issue with it.
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Just use emojis. Need to cater for the thickos who can't read.
SAFC1962 said:
SOL - impressive, atmospheric, dignified
SJP - landfill, hotch, potch

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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The approximate centre circle at the SOL is broken.crazy.anyone
 
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RestlessNatives said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

Mountain Rescue in England and Wales shows the BBC dozens of wrong addresses it has been given.
www.bbc.co.uk

Once you add in the human element like accents, reading ability etc, it's obvious that there is a large margin for error.
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Read an article about this a while ago and there are issues around homonyms and plurals being close.

E.g. bed. Sleet. Page and beds.sleet page might be less than 10 miles apart.

Similarly made.cheese.shoe and maid.cheese.shoe might also be close.
 
Big Sharp Teeth said:
Read an article about this a while ago and there are issues around homonyms and plurals being close.

E.g. bed. Sleet. Page and beds.sleet page might be less than 10 miles apart.

Similarly made.cheese.shoe and maid.cheese.shoe might also be close.
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That's mad... why would they use homonyms and plurals anyway? Surely that is a fundamental design flaw. There are lots of words to choose from.
 
Kent_Mackem said:
That's mad... why would they use homonyms and plurals anyway? Surely that is a fundamental design flaw. There are lots of words to choose from.
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Yeah, it’s stupid. Hence the criticism. And you also have to consider that homonyms might vary from region to region in the U.K. Pass and parse don’t sound the same in the north east but can in areas of the south.
 
Big Sharp Teeth said:
Yeah, it’s stupid. Hence the criticism. And you also have to consider that homonyms might vary from region to region in the U.K. Pass and parse don’t sound the same in the north east but can in areas of the south.
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I think I am quite childish at heart... several hours have passed since I saw the original post and I've just finished work. Yet I find myself clicking on random locations that I know well and giggling at the words that come up. Simple things....
 
Big Sharp Teeth said:
Read an article about this a while ago and there are issues around homonyms and plurals being close.

E.g. bed. Sleet. Page and beds.sleet page might be less than 10 miles apart.

Similarly made.cheese.shoe and maid.cheese.shoe might also be close.
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Another problem with What Three Words is that is is anglocentric so not really a global solution. It's also a proprietary system and the owners have threaten legal action against open source alternatives: What3Words sent a legal threat to a security researcher for sharing an open-source alternative – TechCrunch
 
Big Sharp Teeth said:
Yeah, it’s stupid. Hence the criticism. And you also have to consider that homonyms might vary from region to region in the U.K. Pass and parse don’t sound the same in the north east but can in areas of the south.
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Thats why when passed over the air to a dispatcher they're usually phonetically to avoid confusion.
 
BlackOps said:
Thats why when passed over the air to a dispatcher they're usually phonetically to avoid confusion.
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Seems a lot easier to use a map reference than spelling out 15-20 letters using the phonetic alphabet plus dots. If you can ascertain the 3m square you're located in, you can ascertain the decimal degrees GPS reference. Numbers are much less ambiguous in any accent. Coordinates also have the benefit of numerical meaning and relation to each other. 54.9182 -1.3829 (the SoL) is very close to 54.9160,-1.3859 (The Colliery Tavern).

The thing is designed for speech recognition and I've never ever come across speech recognition that is able to correctly identify more than about 75% of words, especially with an accent. They're usually good with numbers though... like DD coordinates.

Whereas stupid.zany.system and pointless.hipster.bollocks may be very close, or may be on the other side of the world.

Its aim is simplicity and memorability and it completely fails. An app that uses geolocation to tell you a GPS reference would be just as easy and far more reliable.
 
Beau Peep said:
Seems a lot easier to use a map reference than spelling out 15-20 letters using the phonetic alphabet plus dots. If you can ascertain the 3m square you're located in, you can ascertain the decimal degrees GPS reference. Numbers are much less ambiguous in any accent. Coordinates also have the benefit of numerical meaning and relation to each other. 54.9182 -1.3829 (the SoL) is very close to 54.9160,-1.3859 (The Colliery Tavern).

The thing is designed for speech recognition and I've never ever come across speech recognition that is able to correctly identify more than about 75% of words, especially with an accent. They're usually good with numbers though... like DD coordinates.

Whereas stupid.zany.system and pointless.hipster.bollocks may be very close, or may be on the other side of the world.

Its aim is simplicity and memorability and it completely fails. An app that uses geolocation to tell you a GPS reference would be just as easy and far more reliable.
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Speaking from first hand when w3w has been used and used it myself (around 40-50 occasions) its been great. Control use eastings and northings therefore there may be some confusion over that and coordinates and ive used apps for coordinates where they will give different ones
Beau Peep said:
Seems a lot easier to use a map reference than spelling out 15-20 letters using the phonetic alphabet plus dots. If you can ascertain the 3m square you're located in, you can ascertain the decimal degrees GPS reference. Numbers are much less ambiguous in any accent. Coordinates also have the benefit of numerical meaning and relation to each other. 54.9182 -1.3829 (the SoL) is very close to 54.9160,-1.3859 (The Colliery Tavern).

The thing is designed for speech recognition and I've never ever come across speech recognition that is able to correctly identify more than about 75% of words, especially with an accent. They're usually good with numbers though... like DD coordinates.

Whereas stupid.zany.system and pointless.hipster.bollocks may be very close, or may be on the other side of the world.

Its aim is simplicity and memorability and it completely fails. An app that uses geolocation to tell you a GPS reference would be just as easy and far more reliable.
Click to expand...

Its also much easier to use if you dont have a device to hand and easy to memorise especially in stressful situations
 
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We’ve just started using it for deliveries at work, couriers always saying they can’t find sites etc
 

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