jackorino:

baetrice-duke:

hashtagdion:

Just to expand on this post about calling 911 and asking for a pizza to secretly ask for help:

The post is based on a Super Bowl commercial, which itself was based on a Reddit post that’s never been verified as true. 

There is no actual pizza code with toppings and shit that dispatchers are trained in. If you come across someone who has heard of the commercial, they might understand. If you come across someone who’s never heard of it, they might think it’s a prank call and hang up on you.

A piece of actual advice to help you in this situation is to dial 911, then hang up without speaking, then turn the phone off. 911 will attempt to call you back, and when they’re unable to reach you, they’ll dispatch a unit to your location under the assumption that you need help and your call was interrupted. This will work 100% of the time, whereas the pizza trick will only work if the dispatcher has heard of the commercial/urban legend.

Also, the toppings thing was a complete and total fabrication and whoever wrote that should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.

If you’re on a cell phone, the dispatcher DOES NOT KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. You do need to find an excuse to give them your address, and ordering food is the best excuse. A 911 dispatcher will not just hang up if they think you might be prank calling them, they’ll ask you if there’s an emergency and you can say “yes,” and say your address and whatever else you need to say to keep your cover (like a pizza order). This doesn’t rely on any code, it relies on the fact that 911 dispatchers are trained to send a unit no matter what—as long as they know where to send it.

This is actually a huge problem with 911 dispatchers, they DO NOT KNOW YOUR LOCATION

It seems like a basic thing you would expect an emergency service to be able to figure out, but they DON’T, THEY CAN’T, UNLESS YOU TELL THEM

Here’s a video John Oliver and Last Week Tonight did on how 911 dispatch works

When I was in a car accident and had to get my mom to the hospital last year, it took 5 minutes just for me to confirm with the 911 dispatcher that they knew where I was, and even then I watched while they whizzed past the street where we were waiting. The most crucial thing first responders have to know in the case of an emergency is where you are. Don’t skip this information, please.