112 Vs 911

[VetLegion]

In my opinion this is just an example where Europeans went out of their way to outsmart themselves and the world and in the process got us two standards where one would have sufficed.

I have thought about this and I have concluded that US standard of 911 should have been adopted by the EU. This is because:

1) US standard is older
2) US standard is already familiar to most Europeans who got to know it through American media (who hasn't seen Shatner in 911?), while 112 is not only unfamiliar to US citizens, it is not familiar even to most Europeans who previously had separate national standards

I leave the potential consequences of the confusion (of, say, tourists) about emergency numbers to your imagination.

My point about precedence is proven by the following two excerpts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1

In 1968, a solution was agreed upon. AT&T had chosen the number 911, which met the requirements that it be brief, easy to remember, dialed easily, and that it worked well with the phone systems in place at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-1-2

In 1991, the European Union established 112 as the universal emergency number for all its member states.

Please vote in this most important poll.

[VetLegion]

Excellent. The first victim of confusion just fell - I was so lost I forgot to include a poll. See?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Please vote in this most important poll.

I would if I could.

[DanS]

I don't have anything against 1-1-2. But isn't it easy to misdial it? A kid could pick up the phone and dial it mistakenly.

[Julian Delphiki]

Our 000 was the greatest emergency number ever.

[VetLegion]

We had (still have)

92 - police
93 - firemen
94 - ambulance
95 - get the current time

I do support standardization and unification, but reinventing the wheel is

[Krill]

9-9-9 is the only way

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by DanS
I don't have anything against 1-1-2. But isn't it easy to misdial it? A kid could pick up the phone and dial it mistakenly.

This seems to have been an issue with the British 9-9-9 (it wasn't an issue with Finnish the 0-0-0 because Finnish kids are smarter) and it is the reason why the accepted code isn't 1-1-1 but 1-1-2. There is a rationale on the wiki page I linked to. They did think about which number to take, but it didn't occur to them that US already has a perfectly good number chosen which many Europeans already know.

[Snotty]

999 *****es

also I think 911 and 112 work here as well

it sucks either way when when locked keypad on my mobile ends up typing out 999 when its in my pocket

[-Jrabbit]

I always thought 999 was underrated.

999 artist bio

[Zkribbler]

I though 9-1-1 was invented by the Europeans. I vaguely remember a television series back in the 60's or 70's, set in England, which began every episode with someone dialing 9-1-1 (inevitably from a phone booth).

[SlowwHand]

666 should get the fire department.

[Patroklos]

Aren't the police watching all Europeans live on CCTV anyway? Why is there a need for any emergency number?

[BeBMan]

The advantage with 112 is that it's easier to use cuz you only need to able to count from one to two, while counting up to nine is much more difficult esp. in emergency (=stress) situations.

FACT

[Riesstiu IV]

The emergency number should just be all prime numbers between 0 and 20.

135-7-1113-1719