We would all like to believe that when when we call 911, we’ll be given the help we need immediately. However, as John Oliver explained last night on Last Week Tonight, that’s not always the case, and there’s a number of reasons why.
First, as Oliver points out, due to the increased use of cell phones nowadays, it’s more difficult for 911 dispatchers to pinpoint exactly where our location is if we don’t know the address. Many times on 911 calls, too much time is taken up trying to figure out the exact streets callers are on or places they are at. That’s because unlike companies like Facebook, Uber, or even Dominos, many emergency call centers lack the funding and technology to zero in on where exactly people are calling from, despite the fact that improvements to the technology used for location accuracy could save more than 10,000 lives per year.
“People making emergency calls are on the very short list of things we expect to be found 100 percent of the time,” Oliver says. “It’s that, the clitoris, and Nemo. He’s not a bad fish, he’s not a bad fish. He’s just curious, and he’s capable of more than you think.”
The worst part about this whole situation, though, is that many states have the money to help make their emergency call centers the best they can be, ensuring that they’re well-staffed and given the newest and most helpful technology available, and that’s because every time you call 911 on your phone, you pay a small fee. This fee is typically around $1.20, and some states, such as New York, took in nearly $200 million in fees in 2015. However, in New York, over $77 million of that $185 million was diverted to the state’s general fund, where it can be used for anything, even as New York’s emergency centers continually face problems.
So if states are going to keep diverting funds for emergency centers to other seemingly “more important” projects (although what’s more important than saving lives I’m not sure I’ll ever know), John Oliver believes we should be more honest and informative with people in 911 PSAs. That’s why he and a couple of familiar faces created their own, new PSA in the Last Week Tonight video below. Check it out:
[Photo via YouTube]
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