Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

13.1 ‘I'VE JUST RUN SOMEONE OVER’

There were nearly 6,420,000 car accidents in the United States in 2005¹ – that's a lot of car crashes! Approximately 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people were killed in auto accidents in 2005, based on data collected by the Federal Highway Administration.

Using a cell phone to call for emergency assistance can be an awkward affair. The biggest problem is pinpointing the location of the accident. ‘It's near a lamp post near a post box near a turning’ is not quite good enough for the emergency services to find where the accident has taken place. Because of the number of deaths and serious injuries that are aggravated by lack of a timely response from the services, the Federal Government (Federal Communications Commission – FCC) in the United States introduced a law, called the wireless Enhanced 911 edict (E911²). This stipulated that a mobile phone operator must be able to locate physically (geographically) a mobile making an emergency call.

According to the E911 website³:

The wireless E911 program is divided into two parts – Phase I and Phase II. Phase I requires carriers, upon appropriate request by a local Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), to report the telephone number of a wireless 911 caller and the location of the antenna that received the call. Phase II requires wireless carriers to provide far more precise location information, within 50 to 100 meters in most cases.

Figure 13.1 By default, a cellular network knows our ...