Though were kind of, sort of, moving past the era of the butt dialing on our cellphones thanks to the advent of the touchscreen, it’s still happening to a significant degree. The worst is that it’s quite often 911.
CBS 2 did some digging around and found that 20 percent of all 911 calls placed from cellphones were unintentional dials. And it’s costly in terms of time, money and resources.
Operators have to stay on the line until the call drops, then call back the number to see if there’s a real emergency. Since cell phones can only be tracked by general location, in extreme cases officers are dispatched to find whoever might be in distress.
“The chances of that happening are slim, but we’ve – a couple times probably, over the past few years – have had to basically launch a search party to locate somebody,” Polinski said.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is why you lock your homescreen. [CBS 2]
Image credit: Shutterstock/Tyler Hartl
