We were gone when the whole 911 failure occurred and missed it. If it hadn’t made national news, we may not have known except for the messages on our answering machine. We had one letting us know it was out, and one notifying us it was back in service. And while that may be true, our CenturyLink phone line (and at least one neighbor’s) hasn’t worked at all off and on since.
But that failure got me to thinking about all the technology we depend on every day.
Some, frankly, is a bit frightening — like self-driving cars. I see a lot of idiots driving a car, but at least there is a driver I can communicate with using sign language and gestures when their driving deserves it. It may not help, but sometimes it makes me feel better.
And although I know there are too many distracted drivers using their phone, reading or sending texts, or fiddling with other technology in their car, I’m not convinced a computer driving one is better.
But there’s so much more we’ve allowed technology to do, like deposit checks, control our locks, yell at thieves in our house or on our porch through our phone, record programs remotely from our TV’s, and control almost everything else in the house using technology if we want to.
Lets face it — we’re dependent on technology in some cases to the point of addiction, and when it doesn’t work, we’re not happy.
But technology also has risks, like viruses planted by people with criminal intent, skimmers that can steal your identity and passwords by being near you when you use your card, or people who do it the old fashioned way and steal your mail.
And now we have cars with a mind of their own.
All of that is bad, but the failure of the 911 system is worse, especially for those who really need to reach help suddenly and can’t. For them it’s not just an inconvenience or irritant — it may well be fatal.
I don’t know why it failed yet, but it gives me little comfort that finding out will be left to a “government investigation” to help find out. Especially if that means more government “hearings” or more “oversight.”
If it does, it seems unlikely they’ll figure this or anything else out.
Over the course of the last year on at least two occasions while traveling, I have encountered accidents and used 911 systems. In another, I was stopped and watched as another traveler used it and this failure reminded me how helpless I’d felt if the system hadn’t worked. How would I or any other traveler call for help?
If you’re around home, having the non-emergency number isn’t really a difficult thing to have handy, and you should. But the whole reason for 911, and the reason we teach kids at an early age that number, is because it’s universal. Or it’s supposed to be.
I really hope they can figure out what happened and why and then reduce the chances this might happen again. If they suggest however, they can prevent it from ever happening again, while lofty, it’s also unlikely that’s possible. Especially given the number of humans involved.
After all, anyone who uses computers knows that even when shutdown correctly, computers sometimes don’t work the next time they are powered up. The “why” is what we don’t know.
And when anything with a computer fails, the first thing the tech on the phone — that you can’t use to call with — will tell you to do is restart it.
Magically, most of the time, that will fix the problem, but again, the “why” is still a mystery.
Time will tell if they can really figure out what went wrong and why the 911 system broke down, but one thing is certain; failure can’t be an option.
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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
