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ITU To Choose Emergency Line For Mobiles: 911, or 112?
First time accepted submitter maijc writes "The International Telecommunication Union will determine the standard emergency phone numbers for new generations of mobile phones and other devices. AP reports that member states have agreed that either 911 or 112 should be designated as emergency phone numbers. 911 is currently used in North America, while 112 is standard across the EU and in many other countries worldwide."
The UK added 112 as an alternative many years ago, so while 999 is the popularly ingrained emergency number there would be no problem in the UK with a phone having 112 as the default emergency number.
I believe in Asia (or at least Korea), it's 119, so even those two aren't consistent internationally.
One argument for 112 is that it's easier to quickly dial if you're having an emergency moment and your finger-mobility is limited. An argument against would be that it's easier to dial by accident. I believe that 911/119 were chosen partially because those were the farthest spaced digits, to prevent accidental dialling.
I once had a co-worker who had a very simple phone number. Something like 555-545-4544 (or had only 2-3 unique digits). He amused us once by playing back a message that some random young child had left on his voicemail over the weekend, presumably after mashing keys on the phone. The interesting part was that it wasn't the first such voicemail he had, but it was generally from different random children.
So 112 may be easier to dial in an emergency, but it's also likely to have a higher number of mis-dials or 3-year-olds that just picked up a phone and mashed part of the number-pad.
The 911 goes back to the dial telephone days, when numbers could be dialled by line clicks. Nine is very unlikely to be mis-dialled, but took longer (9 or 10 pulses to send), and 1 was quick, so 911 was a good compromise. In the UK 999 would almost never be dialled by line noise but took longer.