Quote from: Rick on March 15, 2012, 07:12:30 AMJust a thought, maybe you should have a liability waiver for all visitors to your home.
"Warning - if you have to call 911 while in my home, the 911 operator will not receive location data automatically which they then incorporate into a mapping service to most efficiently dispatch emergency services. Therefore, it's possible that if you, as a guest in my home, cannot provide the correct address, or the dispatcher misunderstands the address that you do provide, that emergency services may be delayed in their response, and possibly may adversely effect your health and well-being. Your signature on this form releases me, and my estate, from all liability if your health and well-being is adversely effected". 
Just a thought, maybe flying unicorns should land on my lawn and fart gold coins.
THAT'S as likely to happen as what you suggested.
Here's another thought: Maybe you should stay home, in your nice monitored home with the alarm system, and not ever go visit anyone else. Because, you know, maybe the person you're visiting is like most people and hardly gives a thought to safety unless they are standing next to the edge of a cliff or something. If people like you would stay home, the rest of us wouldn't need to worry that you might try to use our phones.
Or better yet, you could bring your own cell phone, which will always have 911 access.
Before we get too carried away here, let me explain my objection to this whole e911 business. Basically, I see it as a money grab by the incumbent phone companies. They soak local governments for the 911 trunks (and in some cases the equipment) and then they turn around and soak local phone users. But in my opinion, that's an unfair distribution of the costs, because it puts the brunt of the expense on phone users. In the old days, at least there was usually only one change per household but nowadays with both parents plus the kids carrying cell phones, and maybe a landline or commercial VoIP service, they may get soaked for the 911 charge multiple times. Meanwhile the homeless guy on the street pays nothing.
But here's the problem, e911 benefits EVERYONE. So really, it should be funded in the same way that public sidewalks or bike paths are funded, which is to say, everyone able to pay should contribute their fair share, and not a penny more. If someone gets into a car accident outside your home and you call 911, they get the benefit whether they have ever paid a dime toward 911 funding or not. If police and fire departments can be funded from taxes, why not e911? As a bonus, government would have more incentive to make the phone companies justify their costs, instead of just letting them claim they need to charge every customer so much per line. The real inequity is where you have a factory or store with maybe 25 employees or more, but they only have one incoming phone line so they pay one e911 charge, yet the family of five that is barely scraping by might be paying five or six e911 charges. So when I hear preachy people try to convince people that they simply MUST have e911, I always wonder in the back of my mind if they aren't telephone company shills (or stockholders) trying to fatten their own wallets. I realize not every e911 proponent has a financial stake in getting people to pay more and more for the service, but that's the point, we don't know what motivates people to stick their nose in other people's business, and very often that reason is in some way self-serving.
