Do you know where you are?

Please do. It is one of the most useful thinks you can have to help us find you.

wouldn't the phone give a GPS reading apart from what3words.
the old northings and eastings, like in OS maps.

My daughter has What3Words on her phone. She works for Hospital at Home and finds the app very useful for finding some of her patients remote, rural homes. Especially useful at night and in bad weather in unlit areas.

What3Words helped us find our son camping in a field in the middle of nowhere.

SatNav couldn't get us anywhere near!

What3words helped the gas man find our house when he came to service our boiler last week. Nobody can find our house as it isn't visible from the road.
I just wish more service and delivery people used it.

I do have What3words on my phone but could also give accurate directions to where I was by Google map on my phone which picks up exactly where my phone is. My new car has an amazing sat nav, very user friendly, which shows where my car is and any local landmarks.

But yes, I think What3words in excellent and very helpful to the emergency services.

Welbeck - yes your phone can give you grid references, but if you live in a rural area the grid covers a wide area and so isn’t as accurate, so you can be in the middle of a field but the reference will take you to somewhere half a mile away. Sketchy network coverage means Google maps takes ages to pick up your location. What3Words is more accurate because the area that is mapped out is much smaller.

Don't forget for normal use WhatsApp lets you send your live map location to another WhatsApp user. This is so useful when visiting friends or family, they can see exactly where you are on your journey and be at the door waiting for you to arrive!

If you get stuck in traffic they can see you're not moving, and they can actually see your car speeding down the road when you are. Great fun!

Thanks nandad

Just type where am I into search and it will show you on a map.

I always know where I am when I am driving and can quickly get precise detail like road numbers from the satnav on my phone

How can you not know where you are when you are driving?

I was in a minor accident a few weeks ago. We did not need to call any emergency services, but I knew exactly where we were on the road we were travelling on and what crossroads the eejit who hit us was trying to race across at the time.

A lot of people pay no attention to road names. For example on my next door app yesterday a local man had found a dog. He described how he had followed it from X roundabout down the Y road trying to catch it. Eventually he caught it near Z roundabout which is nowhere near the roads he had mentioned.It can be quite confusing round here because a lot of people just refer to the roads as the one near the beach instead of the name.

But you can know where you are even if you do not know road names.

When we had our accident I knew exactly where we were and which crossroads we were at, but in a rural area I did not know the road numbers. It took seconds to get my location up on my phone and find that out.

I doubt there was any point on that 200 mile journey where I could not have located myself with road names/numbers within a minute.

This is possibly because , although I use Satnav for directions where to turn and road conditions, any new journey will have been studied on a map to place it in the context of the places it is near, the landscape and what we will be near or travelling through. I really could not travel 'blind', knowing nothing of where I wa, just blindly following directions.

I agree MOnica. We have satnav in both of our cars but I still have a look at the roadmap first to see the route.
Satnavs can go wrong can’t they, and I would hate to not know where I was.
We are the generation brought up with road maps in the car and, much as I love the satnav for journeys in an unfamiliar area, I wouldn’t be without a map.

Having said all that, after reading what people on here have said about the usefulness of the What3words app. I will probably look into it.

I use a road map too. But, when you have been sent on multiple diversions and are in the middle of nowhere with what looks like a fatality, getting emergency services to the EXACT spot quickly is crucial. Saying it’s on the A123 just after the war memorial isn’t helpful when potentially the first responders are not familiar with the area.

Have had this app on my phone for a while. Use my satnav for unfamiliar journeys. Absolutely cannot read a map.

I’ll have to look into the app. I never know where I am unless I’m familiar with the area. I have a terrible sense of direction, always have had. I can follow a map but you can’t do that whilst driving.

nandad But saying 'on the A123, just after the junction with the B321' or the road to Anytown and Nowhere, will work, but First Responders have access to very accurate mapping facilities and do usual know the landmarks. I think they are programmed into their mapping software.

When I reported my accident to my insurer. I told her the numbers of the two roads and added the name of the crossroads. By the time I had finished speaking, she had it up on google maps, or whatever they use, and based on that, and knowing which of the two roads I had been on. She told me the accident was entirely the fault of the other driver and would be treated as such unless he could prove otherwise. This, without any diagrams, witnesses names (there were none) or any further information.

I do not now use maps for navigation but for information. On long journeys, when DH is driving, I have the road atlas on my lap so that I can indentify anything I see, know where one place is in relationship with another and I can always suggest a diversion to see something interesting and I can also suggest diversions of the kind a satnav would never offer you if there are hold-ups ahead. When I am driving DH does just the same.

Agree with your posts Monica.

If I know the area, I’ll refer to a shop, pub, church and street name with the emergency services but they have triangulation mapping on their systems anyway which can identify where you’re phoning from.

If I’m somewhere unfamiliar I’ll have looked at maps and have an ordered list of road numbers etc anyway to where I’m going - why wouldn’t you if you hadn’t been there before?‍♀️

It's a great app. I also have my son listed as ICE - in case of emergency - on my phone.

It’s a great app delivery driver’s should all use it. I used it when I worked on a country estate where trees had come down.

What3Words is really useful if you go walking in woods or fields where it can be difficult to find any landmarks. I often overhear call handlers asking people to download it at the scene to enable us to find them quickly. It maps to a 3 metre square so is very accurate. The 3 words are inputted onto a website and give us an exact location, very important if you're lying there with a broken ankle or worse.

We use w3w in our address so that delivery people can find us.

PS we are not on a street