We needed an ambulance off road in the middle of Richmond Park where a postcode would also not help. We didn't have WTW either, which they asked for and would have helped immensely.
I know - my van broke down recently, had the same experience even though I could describe the location exactly by intersection of roads, or grid reference.
As I had a smartphone they did at least have a link I could click which would give me my w3w location, which I had to read back to them.
Why didn't they just use Advanced Mobile Location? I called in a fire for a fallen tree in the middle of the field and they just asked if it was next to where I'm standing.
w3w has been sold to most UK emergency services to deal with that exact scenario. I know Richmond Park well, and it's hard to direct anybody to anywhere in it using addresses, so it makes sense.
The problem is that w3w is privately owned and has multiple issues with it, as well documented elsewhere.
They could invest in a solution that allows for an OS grid reference to be discovered by sending you a link (a bit like they do with w3w), or some other open (already paid for) reference. That still has limitations if you don't have a smart phone with GPS on it, but I'd argue it's better than what they have right now.
Of course none of this solves for the fact the most useful location dataset in the country is the PAF, and we can't use that without spending a small fortune on licensing it.
Centimetre, and after the next big earthquake are all numbers off, sometimes even by several meters. Now what you do? New addresses for all, or wrong numbers to new buildings?
When the ambulance arrives wave your hands and say "over here!". So they can do the "last several meters" of navigation by homing on your visual presence.
In the best case your GPS is off by far more than the worst case GPS. There are GPS receivers that can get you to within 2cm, but they cost thousands of dollars and are not used in phones.
In the context of navigation that is good enough - if you are within 100 meters you can look to see your destination.
Lat/long coordinates and metres are actually linked quite closely: the metre was originally defined as "the arc from equator to North pole is defined as 10,000 km". That is, 90 degrees is 10,000 km.
And if the French had had their way, we’d use grads not degrees and latitude would instead be 100 grads per 10,000km, so each grad of latitude would be 100km.
That kind of sanity was, of course, unacceptable to the rest of the world.
The French were really into decimalization for a while. They tried decimal time (10 decimal hours per day, each 100 decimal minutes, each 100 decimal seconds), and a new calendar with equal 30-day months (the extra days at the end were national holidays, in September in the Gregorian calendar). Also 10-day 'décades' instead of weeks.
