Asking Siri for help during a 911 call may not be as effective as people think.
Credit: Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels
The survivor of a sexual assault who shared her story as a reminder to others to be vigilant at one point during her attack tried to talk to her phone for help.
"You know how you can say, 'Hey Siri,' but I realized it wasn’t in the bag that I had," said 29-year-old Vanessa Ursini.
Ursini was attacked Wednesday morning while walking her dog on the South Platte River trail in Littleton. The suspect, 38-year-old Johnny Dewayne Harris, has since been arrested.
So, how effective would it be to ask Siri to call for emergency services during an attack?
It depends.
Siri, for example, will initiate a 5-second countdown and call 911 if you tell her to dial emergency services.
But if you can't talk to her to tell her your exact location, dispatchers at the nearest 911 communications center may treat it as an abandoned call, according to Athena Butler, director of Denver's 911 Communications Center.
"If we don't get anyone when we call them back, we put it up as a police incident ... and then we BOLO it as a 911 hangup from this location," Butler said.
Here's the thing: Dispatchers may not know exactly where the call is coming from. Sometimes they get an exact address, but other times they get a cell tower location, which means the call came from within 300 meters of that tower.
If it's a tower, officers then have to search that 300-meter radius to try and find the caller.
"[That's] a pretty good distance if someone's calling for help," Butler said.
Change in tech may improve location accuracy in Denver
Commercial companies (think Uber and Lyft) are able to pinpoint exact locations, but many dispatch centers' tech hasn't kept pace with what's available.
That could soon change -- at least in Denver.
Denver is a beta city working with New York-based emergency communications tech company RapidSOS to improve location accuracy that's delivered to 911 when someone calls from an Apple device.
"Denver would be able to see more accurate and fast location information," said Michelle Cahn, a spokesperson for RapidSOS.
All Apple phones that accept an update coming later this year will be equipped with that technology, Cahn said.
Kelli Christensen, communications director for Denver's Department of Public Safety, said people should not use their conversational agent to call 911 unless it's an actual emergency.
"We encourage you not to do that as an experiment because it takes away from call center resources," she said. "Any call they get that's 911, even a hang-up, they have to call back to investigate."
