The thing like GPS that uses 4 words instead of lat / long?

[SexyGreyFox]

Without going through the whole thread I could sympathise with one of the original complaints with the 3 word system. One being that if the person on the other end of the phone miss hears you or say you have a strong accent that is hard to decipher in a foreign Country then mistakes can easily happen. The 3 words are so unique that even getting one wrong could throw you 100 if not 1000s of miles away from the actual location. Certainly seems useful though, especially if you can text the 3 word answer.

Then you confirm the area you are in
eg limit broom flip in Notting Hill

if you get broom & flip the wrong way round you are in Delaware.
If they hear limit.broom.slip you are in Washington and nobody is going that far out of their way.

 

[ic1male]

Never heard of this before. Impressed. When I used their webpage map to find my address, it plonked me about 20 metres up the road but I could pick the square directly in my front drive to get a better location. Going to try it on my Garmin watch and see if it picks the same words up.

 

[touch]

The 3 words are so unique that even getting one wrong could throw you 100 if not 1000s of miles away from the actual location. Certainly seems useful though, especially if you can text the 3 word answer.

That's a feature, not a problem. It's intentionally designed like that.
You might not know exactly where you are, but you probably know roughly which country you're in so it's easy to verify the words were communicated correctly.
If you read out a grid ref or lat/long location, an error could put it off by 5-10 miles. No way to verify that and equally small chance of rescuers finding you.

 

[Lopéz]

Any method of passing location information is going to be fallible. Voice, SMS, or data can all fail in different ways as can the systems in place to process the information.

Which is why you would want a multi-tier approach to the problem - I don't think anybody is suggesting the W3W should be the only way of communicating location information.

I can certainly see situations where it would be useful.

Its worth noting to the naysayers that the U.K. emergency services do seem to be using it - I assume they know what they're talking about.

As a side note - ELTs have a massive false alarm rate, I doubt very much if an ELT activation without any supporting information (such as a missed check-in for hikers, for example) will generate a prompt response from the emergency services.

Great use case for this in less developed countries too, or those lacking a traditional structured address system.

Have a look at this new video by a South African emergency service:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI2W8TM-OTU