In case of injury in a remote location?

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Randy Butternubs

Über Member
A friend of mine badly injured himself on a country road a while back. Luckily there was someone with him who could get the postcode from a house down the road and phone for an ambulance. He then messaged me with a google maps location using whatsapp so I could pick up the bike in my car.

I was there in 20 minutes despite having been asleep, thanks to modern phones/sat nav. We kept thinking the ambulance would show up any minute but after waiting two or three hours we were found by a policeman who had been roped into the search.

Devon is hardly remote but you can be 10 minutes drive away from a town and still have limited/nonexistant phone signal, on a road with nobody driving through or living on it. It seems the emergency services want the post code or road name, neither of which you probably know. Even if you know the road it might be several miles long - apparently in our case they searched the road we were on but didn't go far enough. They can try to triangulate your location from the phone signal but it's inaccurate and presumably hard to do when the connection is spotty. Supposedly Android phones now use the GPS to send your location when you dial 999. Didn't seem to work for my friend though.

I think the ideal system for such a situation would be to have an app that could get your coordinates using GPS and send it to the emergency services via SMS. That way you would only need enough signal strength for the phone to squeeze off a text and they would have a pretty accurate idea of your location. I searched but couldn't find anything like that in the UK. Is anyone aware of something like that?

Failing that, I've found this (http://www.emergencysms.org.uk/) which lets you register your phone so that you can contact the emergency services by text. If combined with an app that let you know your coordinates and/or postcode without internet connectivity it could work. Does anyone know of such an app? If you give them your latitude and longitude or OS grid reference can they do anything with it or are they only set up to use postcodes?

Failing all that, does anyone have any good ideas for what to do in such a situation?
 
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Drago

Legendary Member
SARLOC. Alternatively, police mapping systems can read OS coordinates if you have a GPS app.
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
I can't help with any app suggestion but I have a Nano-102 GPS tracker from www.rewiresecurity.co.uk which cost me £20. I got it for my drone but have used it to track my luggage while travelling abroad.

You can set alarms for various events including stops exceeding a user-defined length of time. This might be useful in your scenario but would rely on having another person who could act on that alarm by alerting the emergency services. It would send a text to a chosen number(s) with a set of coordiates along with a Google maps link. You could also send a text to it at any time and it'll respond with that info immediately.
It also has an SOS button on it, assuming the rider is in a position to trigger it.

A bit clunky as a solution but would give a precise location when it's needed most and it's fairly cheap.

The tracker can be viewed on Rewire's web platform too, showing real time information about speed, direction, altitude, course taken etc.

I see they do a more expensive personal tracker which might have better suitability but I have no experience of that.
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
My Mio 505 head unit has a "Where Am I?" option, gives me my current address and postcode, Lat/Lon coordinates, and lets me text someone (if connected to phone) with the details too, you can preprogramme a default number.
 

DRHysted

Guru
Location
New Forest
Just had a look on my Memory-Map app, and it has a setting that gives your OS position. Hopefully any of the emergency services should be able to find you using that (air ambulance or mountain rescue anyway).
 
SARLOC. Alternatively, police mapping systems can read OS coordinates if you have a GPS app.
Just been reading up about SARLOC and saw a message from the author saying its a web page, not an app. I can't understand exactly how it works - is it something that the rescue services sends to you so your phone reports its location? Or can you use it yourself please?
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
My greatest worry is of having or witnessing and accident and not being able to describe the location to the 999 service. I can usually say: "The road from X to Y" though, which ought to be sufficient but some of the local lanes are quite complex.

My neighbour went out for a ride and woke up in hospital. He was found unconscious in the road by an off-duty police officer who called the ambulance. There was damage to the back of his head but no damage to the bike or clue as to what had happened. His GPS log showed the bike going along at a good speed then suddenly stopping, then wandering around aimlessly for a minute then stopping again for a few minutes until he was found. The best guess was that he had suffered a blackout similar to one that had floored him a couple of years previously when he was a PC and fainted as he was arresting a bloke. To his credit the bloke was quite concerned for him and didn't run away!
 
My greatest worry is of having or witnessing and accident and not being able to describe the location to the 999 service. I can usually say: "The road from X to Y" though, which ought to be sufficient but some of the local lanes are quite complex.
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I have an app on my iphone called GPS OS, that uses the gps system (unsurprisingly) to display a 12 digit national grid number. It needs gps satellite reception, but not a mobile signal, so if out of mobile reception you can screenshot it and then move to a better reception area or give it to somebody else, depending on how the situation is being managed. I know its available on android.
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
Yes, I have that but I often don't carry a phone. Occasionally I just carry a cheap old pay-as-you go phone.
 
Location
Rammy
I know on the 'Biker Down' course, first run by, I think Kent Fire service for what to do in the event of a motorbike crash they say, if you know what road you're on but not where ask for the fire service and ambulance as the fire service will simply start at both ends of the road and work towards you.

There was a case a few years ago where an ambulance didn't reach someone for a number of hours as no one could work out which area should be covering it!

The fire service don't care, they'll come is the understanding I got from it.
 
Location
London
I think you should always carry a phone to be honest globalti and switched on - a non smart pay as you go phone fine. I know someone who came off a bike on a lane and almost lost an arm because of complications. Luckily he was with folk.
 

NorthernDave

Never used Über Member
I can get co-ordinates and look at a map on my phone without a mobile signalsign I have a Garmin Edge so I can look at a (very small) map on that too.
I use Garmin livetrack so if I'm riding solo and have an accident Mrs ND can (in theory) check and get help if necessary. The reality is that she could easily not notice for hours...

Or you could get one of these - you wouldn't even need to phone for help then:
https://www.breitling.com/us-en/emergency/
 
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Drago

Legendary Member
Just been reading up about SARLOC and saw a message from the author saying its a web page, not an app. I can't understand exactly how it works - is it something that the rescue services sends to you so your phone reports its location? Or can you use it yourself please?

Yarp, it's something MR send you. It works very well, surprised its use isn't more widespread.
 
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