What3Words

We introduce as many people as we can to the app What3Words. Surprisingly, there are still people who have never heard of it. Recently, explaining its use to someone brought the immediate response

This should be amazing for emergency services

So it is.

Jasper’s daughter, a chief controller in the Cambridgeshire & East Anglia Fire Service in England says they have been using it since very soon after it surfaced in the Android Play Store

It’s one thing to break down on the Orange River bridge on the N1, but another if your car comes to a stop in the middle of nowhere. There is a lot of traffic on the N1, so help is almost always at hand, and a response team will know exactly where the Orange River bridge is.

On another main road though, a breakdown can be a very lonely (not to say dangerous) predicament. Thankfully, almost any tarred road has cellphone tower reach, making it easy to direct emergency help to the spot you stand on. Or to within three metres of it. The response operator should ask “What are your three words?”. Whip out your smartphone, open What3Words, and reel off the three dot separated words you find in the text area at the top. As in

“pumpkin.comedy.zen”

And (as Telly Savalas would say) like that. They can even find you off the beaten track if you find you have cell coverage therein your favourite bundu bash.

So, if you have not already done so, before you hit the highway, download the app, play with it to familiarise yourself with it. You may be amazed at how accurate it is, as was a Kinshasa fried, who said

Oh no. Now they can bomb me!