Was reading an article this morning about a bloke in the UK that called their emergency number for a cat that needed removing from his kitchen because he was trying to sleep.

Sure, it's kind of funny and it really blows my mind as how people like this manage to function day to day, but what it does when you consider the THOUSANDS of calls to emergency services that really aren't relevant do in fact endanger lives.

We can be fined for crossing a solid white line on the road, why don't they fine people $500 straight off the bat for calls like that?. $1000 if they do it again, and then $1000 plus a conviction, and so on. I guarantee they'll reduce calls like that by 50% within days. But instead, we get adverts explaining what an emergency call is....

A relative in NZ was up for quite a few fines because her 3 year old kept calling. Bit harsh.

Trouble with this is it will discourage "genuine" 000 calls, and most likely result in extra deaths. If someone has a very marginal chest pain, they may think twice about dialing 000, from apprehension about being prosecuted and wasting time ....... then what happens? They're found dead the next day from a heart attack.

There's literally thousands of situations where people can be unsure whether they should or should not phone 000. Let's not make it harder for these people.

Fair point.

I called 000 several months ago about something that was not yet life threatening but which had the potential to escalate quickly. The police officer I spoke to agreed that it was worth the call.

It was a judgement call on my part which might have gone differently if I'd risked fines in making that call.

One alternative would be to have a similar but lower priority number (911 maybe) for the calls where lives are not at clear risk but where you do need to alert police or other emergency services to an incident.

R0bert

Robert, that's a good idea. But it'll probably never happen because it'll cost money to setup.