When did you (or SYK) use a cel in an emergency?

In My Humble Opinion
21

A few years ago, I was driving down this one highway, not a lot of cars, and this guy who was speeding and such lost control of his car right in front of me. His car launched off the road, flipped end over end and rolled three times. he was ejected from his car (no seatbelt-apparently) I was the first person on the scene and had 911 on the line and an ambulance on the way before any other cars had stopped. The guy had a severe skull fracture (the whole back of his head looked like it was caved in, he was bleeding from one of his ears and was barely concious. He lived because paramedics were able to get to him quickly. If I hadn’t had my cell phone, the nearest pay phone was more than 10 miles up the road and he probably would have died.

Another time, my car stalled/died on new years eve on a back road at about 11pm. All surrounding businesses which were a pretty far walk were closed. My hood was up, flashers on. A few cars drove by and I tried to flag them for help, no one would stop. I even had a police cruiser pass by, he didn’t even stop :mad:. because I was so late in returning, my mom decied to come look for me (she knows the majority of the routes I take) she found me :slight_smile: yay mom!! Then she called for a tow truck for me. That was when I decided to get a cell phone! I was there for two hours and not one person stopped to help. Yes not life and death, but still.

22

Well, “cellular” is an extension of “cell”. Each area covered by a particular tower is called a “cell” - thus the towers are called “cellular towers”, and the phones “cellular phones”.

23

How 'bout Flight 93?

I’m really not anti-cel. I do find the emergency justification a little silly sometimes. For a couple reasons.

  1. One person’s inconvenience is another person’s emergency. A sense of perspective would sometimes help more than a cel phone.

  2. Even if it does help some people in emergency situations, you still have to look at it in a cost-benefit framework, keeping in mind the marginal utility, not the absolute utility, of the phone.

By that I just mean, given the billions that are spent on cels every year, how much of a return safety-wise have they really brought, keeping in mind the scenario that would have occured without the presence of the cel.

Thanks for the responses.

24

I’m with SilverFire. While I agree that some mobile users are uncouth boors, no one needs to justify their wants or perceived needs to own and use such devices.

Where they are prohibited, like ICUs, leave them in the car or turned off. Where it would bother other people’s enjoyment of something, like PGA tourneys or movies, leave them off.

If you want to use one to call a friend or a service to help you out of some dire emergency or just an annoying inconvenience, you go right ahead and call, honey! No need for explanations.

25

My wife and I were driving through Arizona back in January of 1996 when our car’s engine gave out. We were about 30 miles East of Yuma. No man-made structures other than the highway itself visible.

Boy, are we glad we had a cell phone to call AAA from.

26

Don’t read too much into the original question. I didn’t ask anyone to justify their decision to own a cellphone, just curious in regard to people who do use the emergency excuse as their justification for owning one.

Sure, I may be a little slanted, but moreso just curious as to how prevalent the emergency use is, and what people really consider emergencies.

Munch – you’re right. “cel” does seem to be common enough (31000 google hits for “cel phone”) but not compared to 7M google hits for “cell phone”. Count me as just never making the connection of cellular as the adj. form of cell in the phone scenario besides having a close friend who is a cellular biologist.

27

And I don’t have mine in case of emergency. I keep one for work, and because it’s convenient. It just happened to come in handy once in an actual emergency.

What’s bugging my here isn’t the cell phone debate. I could care less if someone else has one, as long as it isn’t annoying. I don’t care what reason, if any, they might have for justifying one either. If someone wants one just because it’s pretty, and buys it themselves, fine by me. I don’t care.

What’s bothering me is your condescension as to what constitues an emergency. Why do you think some of these reasons don’t qualify? It doesn’t matter what you think, what matters is what the person experiencing it thinks. You’ve presented a postition here that’s coming across to say that, “Hey, your hurt wife is a mere inconvenience, and she could have hiked herself to a phone.”

Like anyone’s going to stop and think, “Hey, Trunk doesn’t justify my use of a cell phone in this instance,” and stop using it?

If you don’t care to carry a cell phone, then don’t. If the monthly charges aren’t worth the potential help here, then don’t have one. Nobody is going to mind. You make your own call on that, but don’t try to tell those of us that do choose to use them that our reasons, that our personal crises aren’t good enough by your standards. It’s just rude.

Although I think that if you are trying to balance cost with benefits, MissTake’s solution of a pay-as-you-go phone is a good compromise.

28

How about when I needed a cell phone and didn’t have one… When a idiot stole a motorcycle and decided that he could make a left hand turn in front of a speeding tractor-trailer. He was wrong. I pull over to the nearest phone booth wishing I had a cell phone to call 911 sooner. The guy was stuck under the wheels; you might not have thought it was an emergency. Or when my car died in rush hour on the interstate in construction - in the far left lane with no median, just a concrete wall that I could sit on. I had to cross 3 lanes of very busy, hostile traffic, climb an embankment and finally use someone else’s cell phone. Emergency? Sure did seem like it to the thousands of people stuck because of me.

I got my first cell phone when I was confined to a wheelchair. Wrong move in freshly mopped office bathroom and I spill all over the floor. Emergency? You wouldn’t think so; I wasn’t bleeding. But being able to call and get help was wonderful.

We use our cell phone for 911 all the time. Traffic accidents; storm damage; you name it, I’ve called it in.

And please. It’s **cell ** phone. Don’t just believe me - check Google.
227,000 for “cel phone”
10,300,000 for “cell phone”

Bad spelling isn’t helping your argument either.

29

Yeah, this kinda pissed me off as well. But, seeing as we are not in the Pit, I didn’t really want to tell the OP what I thought of his attitude. If at some point this gets moved to the Pit, I’ll have a few choice words…

30

Because the point of the thread was “how useful was your cellphone”, not “how bad was your emergency”.

What if your neighbors weren’t home and you didn’t have a cell? Yeah. Big trouble for Cowgirl. But, your neighbors WERE home. The outcome was essentially the same if you didn’t have one.

Clearly, you breaking your leg was more serious than some of these other stories, but your having the cell phone wasn’t as useful.

Your failure to preview isn’t helping yours.

Besides, I never was making an argument. I was asking for stories.

Did I enter this thread with a sense that the emergency argument was a bit specious? Sure.

However, I never said one other thing about the myriad other uses for a cell phone. I never once said a negative thing about them. Don’t put words in my mouth.

31

:rolleyes:
Please, go back and reread your own posts. By publicly disagreeing with other’s perceptions of what constituted an emergency to them, you were arguing.

Are some of your points valid? Sure. But, it’s arguing, none the less.

32

Wait… are we reading the same thread?

OP (psst… that’s you): So has anyone actually used their cellphone in an emergency?

Poster A: Yep, my wife took a nasty spill in BFE and called me to pick her up.

OP (again, that’s you): Pfft! That’s no emergency. NEXT!

Poster B: Well this one time, I had to call my parents after rolling my car a few times.

OP (yep, still you): Oh, right, like your mommy could’ve saved your life. :rolleyes: NEXT!

and on and on. If that’s not arguing, I don’t know what is. I’m not going to get on your case, or pit you, or whatever. But by refuting every single post, you pretty much are demanding that we justify our cell phone use to you. You’re saying, “no, that’s not good enough”. If I were sitting in a ditch with a broken anything, that would be an emergency. Maybe it’s not to you, whatever. There’s no reason to belittle what other people view as an emergency.

Different strokes for different folks and whatnot.

Alternatively, I agree with Cowgirl Jules. “What’s bothering me is your condescension as to what constitues an emergency.”

To that you answered

But that’s not true. If it were, you never would have said, “That still sounds more like an inconvenience – one that no one wouldwant their wife to suffer, and I’m sure you’re glad you had it, but still a matter of convenience. She “cracked her shoulder”? Meaning what? She banged it? Was she bleeding severly? Was it broken?” in response to BrotherCadfael’s story about his wife’s bicycle accident. How useful the cellphone was in that instance would have been the same whether she’d broken her back or a fingernail. She needed a ride, she got one. The extent of her injury is hardly relevent if the point of this thread is not “how bad was your emergency”.

33

well, I was really trying to hone the responses so that I didn’t wind up getting “well, one time I had to go back to the store because I forgot milk.”

I was looking for something where a cell phone made a real difference, that you could tell. I’m not saying that a wife falling off a bike isn’t stressful. I would prefer my wife had one in that case so I could go pick her up too. But ultimately having a cell phone just made it more convenient. By his own admission, a car would have come by.

I recall a woman in SD a few years back where she was stuck out in the middle of a closed highway and I think they were able to pinpoint her location.

I don’t think I’d been beligerent at all before getting asked “is that enough of an emergency for you?”

(or maybe I’m so beligerent in the pit that I consider my tone in this thread cordial? Is my perspective that skewed?)

34

Yeah, a car might well have come by in a couple of hours, maybe. And maybe not. Have you ever spent time in a rural area?

This is my wife we’re talking about. In pain. Yeah, she wasn’t seriously injured, but it did warrant a trip to the ER. And your responses to other posters indicates that you would have dismissed a broken back equally blithely.

What kind of tool are you?

35

Sheesh, I go to lunch and four other people come in and make my point more clearly than I could have. Thanks people!

Trunk, no you’re not using pit language, but you’ve managed to come off as insulting nonetheless.

Your OP wasn’t the insult - although with your clarification, the question you intended didn’t quite come out the way most of us seem to be reading.

No, it’s the picking apart of everyone’s responses that’s condescending. You asked for examples of emergencies in which cell phones played a role, and that’s exactly what you got. Going through one by one saying, “No, that’s not an emergency, you could have done it differently” is not endearing yourself to me here.

You weren’t getting trivial responses. I don’t think many people on this board are inclined to view a shopping list mishap as an emergency.

36

You’re missing an essential part of what I asked. “what emergency were you in where a cell phone made a difference.”

Yeah, cowgirl’s was an emergency. The cellphone didn’t really make a difference.

Cadfael’s story: the cellphone made a difference but it wasn’t really an emergency.

pointing out how they didn’t answer my question is just that. Not arguing. Just pointing out that they’re not answering the question. I was trying to be polite in understanding they were in serious situations.

I’m still saying that. And I’m still saying they didn’t really answer the question. Maybe it was my fault for being unclear.

I didn’t come in and applaud everyone I thought was reasonable either.

I think the last two of badmana’s were good examples.

Maybe sanibelman, but we don’t know.

PretzelFlip, almost definitely.

Probably StGermain.

I was just asking.

37

Trunk, I think you mentioned that you were concerned about the $30-40 monthly cost of a cell phone that you used only rarely. Someone suggested a pay-as-you-go cell phone (aka prepaid cell phone), and that is a good idea. If you’re careful about renewing the minimum amount you can keep the cost to $10-15 per month.

Another idea is to keep your cell phone but cancel the plan. All cell phones are supposed to be able to connect to 911 even if you don’t subscribe to a service. So if you want the phone only for emergencies, that might work for you.

38

You can let the cell phone contract expire and still use it to call 911. Any cell phone should be able to call 911 regardless of what network it’s on (assuming of course that it can get a connection, and has power) or the state of the service for the phone.

Here’s a cite:
http://www.andreas.com/faq-cell911.html

39

I was inspecting a site where one car rear-ended another, injuring the driver, and shoved that car into the flagger, injuring him. I used my cell to summon the police and rescue. No one would have died, but looking for a person who was home (frequently not true on that stretch of road) would have added many minutes to the call being placed, leaving the cars in the road as a hazard for a longer time and preventing both parties from receiving pain meds for a longer time.

I hit a deer in the middle of nowhere North Dakota a couple of years ago. A couple stopped and let me contact the police and towing (and my insurance) with their cell phone. I only saw four cars in the hour and a half that it took for the police and tow to arrive, so, without the phone, I’d have had to find someone willing to make the forty minute drive to “civilization” and then arrange a ride back, either squeezing my kids into their car or leaving my kids alone on the road.
(That may not qualify as an emergency, but I’ll take it.)

40

(Oh, the deer strike occurred well after dark, so the additional time required to find help woulf have lessened the chances of finding a towing company open at that time of night in that location.)