[jameslars]

When you call from a cell phone, public safety answering points get your gps data from the carrier. Landline calls have their associated address data sent. This is called e911 and has been a thing for over 20 years.

The person answering the call will ask for a specific address, but does not need it to send help towards you.

https://www.fcc.gov/general/9-1-1-and-e9-1-1-services

[ssl-3]

Eventually, a 911 PSAP should (but does not always) eventually get decent geographical coordinates -- that's part of what the E911 system is intended to provide.

When it does work (and it usually does work): It's not always instant, it isn't always accurate (the first hit may just be the coordinates of a cell tower -- good luck!) and it doesn't always work inside of buildings. And for some callers some of the time, things like VOIP won't deliver the correct location to a PSAP because things are broken or databases are simply wrong.

And in the best case: It can only reveal the calling party's location, which is not necessarily the location where people actually need help. And it only necessarily reveals that calling party's location to the 911 operator.

It's still generally the job of a human dispatcher to relay that information to the boots-on-the-ground who will actually show up and help the people who need that help.

It's nice to think of it as some tightly-integrated system where somehow the information is, say, relayed automatically from the caller's phone, through CAD, and all the way to the dashboard satnav of an ambulance so they can just hop in and go.

But what usually happens (in my experience hanging around in 911 PSAPs) is that the location is relayed to first responders by human voice over radio.

And addresses are easy to relay by voice.

> The person answering the call will ask for a specific address, but does not need it to send help towards you.

It's important to provide an address because addresses are useful to the 911 operator. E911 is awesome, but it is not an all-knowing, all-seeing system that is somehow born from perfection.

[singleshot_]

PSAP only gets down to 300 yards though, right?