I know someone whose ex-husband was in a fatal traffic accident; he Darwinized himself driving drunk, and really, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer waste of skin, but I digress. He had no driver’s license, because he was just that much of a loser, and no ID whatsoever. The vehicle he was driving was registered to his girlfriend, so no help there. They looked in his phone’s contact list and found no entries for “Mom” or “Home” or “Work” so they checked the recent calls list.
Calling the most recent number, they reached the ex-wife’s neighbor, whom he had called because the ex-wife didn’t have a phone of her own. It was 3am, and the poor lady had to figure out who the deceased was just from the officer’s description.
So yeah, rather important to have some sort of emergency contact info on you at all times. I have ICE entries in my phone and a paper list of the same in my wallet. When I travel, I extend the paper list to include hotel and local friend/relative contact info, and keep that with my passport and travel documents.
A few years ago a minicab crashed on the motorway in the early hours just north of Epping. The car was badly burnt up and the police were unable to salvage any documents from the passenger so they put an appeal for info in the local paper a few days later.
It ended up being published right next to another Police appeal about a man who had gone missing on his way home. His last known location was a cash machine in Epping in the early hours and his wife thought he might have been withdrawing cash to catch a minicab home.
Our Police detectives aren’t the brightest around here!
This is why my husband insists that I take some form of ID with me even when I just go for a walk around the block. I guess he doesn’t want me to go missing in a hospital (and I don’t either, really). Once we all get our chips implanted, that should expedite things nicely.
Paranoid soul that I am, my cell phone is locked with a PIN so the hospital would have some difficulty (I don’t know how much, but I assume some) getting any phone numbers out of it, but I have a paper list of phone numbers in my wallet and enough other stuff (provincial health care card, ID for work, etc) that it wouldn’t be too hard to trace me.
I don’t have an “In case of emergency…” in my wallet, but I don’t think it would be that hard to simply start dialing all the numbers on my paper list until you got someone that could provide information. I don’t have enemies on that list, so I don’t care if the “wrong” people get told.
I don’t carry anything specific, but usually have my wallet and cell on me, so between the two finding my next of kin shouldn’t be too hard.
A quick look on 411.ca tells me that all but one person with the same last name with a public phone number in the province is directly related to me. The odds are similar for my husband. We aren’t too worried.
I usually have my wallet and/or my cell phone with me. Both have emergency contacts.
My husband wears a medic alert bracelet when skiing or riding his bike. I insisted on the bracelet for this very reason. He doesn’t take his wallet and he would have no form of ID on him if anything went wrong.
The only scenarios in which I leave the house without my wallet are if I go out for a run, or if I’m out on a boat diving. In both of those cases I wear a Road ID. If you get the interactive version, you can populate a web page with all kinds of contact, insurance, and medical information.
Last year I found someone’s phone at a convention. I called a few people on her list before I got an answer and told the other person which info booth I’d be dropping the phone off at. Too bad she didn’t have any pictures in her phone, if she was cute I would have volunteered to give it back to her in person
Mine, too. I still have my mother’s phone number identified as my primary contact (in case Airman is deployed) and most of the people in my recent calls list are in my address book. I don’t think they’ll have any problems identifying my charred, disfigured corpse.
I know this may sound strange, but I walk my dog every day and we take long walks.
I usually take my cell phone, but since I’ve been around a few years, I always take my driver’s license.
This is the strange part. I take my license because way, way back in the day, cops used to hassle long-haired teenagers on a regular basis and if you didn’t have ID, then that was an excuse to take you to the pokey. It never happened to me, but it’s been an ingrained habit since them because of some unfortunate circumstances regarding friends.
And here’s the sad part: I also do it because the dog and I walk by parks. It just happens to be our routine. And now, gray-haired guys walking by parks are a subject of suspicion. I guess I’ve come full circle in the suspicion game.
I have my ID with me everywhere I go, and I also have a flash drive with some emergency contact numbers in my backpack in case it gets ‘lost’ somewhere.
Hey mister! Can I have your watch when you are dead?
I got a call from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol once, asking if I owned a certain make and model car. It turns out that the woman I sold the car to had died in an auto accident while driving the car I sold her, had no contact information, and I came up as the registered owner. I had sold the car to her a couple of days previously, and it usually took a few days for the registration change to make it to DMV.
It really creeped me out, but I was able to give the OHP a little more information about the woman that I hoped help them contact her next of kin.
