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As everywhere in the world the emergency services are a very important part of the social life. There are many lives that depend on this service and a simple phone number is the link between us and the emergency service that we need. Like everywhere in the world 911 is the vital emergency service in USA. The 911 emergency services in USA first functioned around the year 1970. Until then the number to be used was only one digit number and it was “0”. It was short after that 911 use was spread though USA. The three digit format was copied from UK, where the emergency service number was 999. The 911 emergency services is in the service of the public that is in need of the police, medical assistance, firefighters. Today the service is very well used, but it also has some flaws and these are because the operator cannot really determine how bad a case is. Today many of the Americans got accustomed to use the service for about everything. They use it for minor headaches or stomach ache or even if they are feeling lonely. It was said by the Meyer of New York that half of the calls that are made to 911 are not really emergencies and that there are persons that are calling 911 several times in a week or even daily. In order to respond to these requests there are a lot of money wasted, starting from the operators and then paying for the services like getting the polie to the location or the ambulance. All of these costs are then reflected on the tax payers. The thing is that a person that is frequently calling 911 for no real emergencies, also called as "frequent flyers”, are not going to talk to the same operators. This means that there is no way to stop them at this point. Then it can be the same with the intervention team. Anyway even if a person is known to be calling repeatedly and usually the case is that they don’t really need the emergency service, the operator and then the intervention service cannot really tell if this time the situation really calls for their intervention. As helpful as the service is, there are these cases when a lot of the effort, time and money are being spend on basically nothing. But developing a system that could track the real cases seems a little difficult, because there are not many chances to detect a person faking an emergency from one that doesn’t and then the reaction time should be as fast as possible. Because of these, many of the persons that needed help from 911, had to wait on the line or could not even reach the service. The best thing to do is to teach the public of the importance of correctly using the 911 emergency services. Starting from early ages, children are though which the situations are when they should call 911 and when they shouldn’t. also they are thought how wrong it is to make falls calls. Home | Privacy |