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That part is reasonable. The nonsense part is > They will even ask you this if you say you're on 3rd Avenue "4th street and 3rd ave" is a unique identifier.
by thedufer 10y ago
That part is reasonable. The nonsense part is
> They will even ask you this if you say you're on 3rd Avenue
"4th street and 3rd ave" is a unique identifier. The East/West part is only relevant if you give the street + a house number, with no cross-street.
- damon_c 10y agoAlso, everyone knows that 3rd ave ends at 6th street so there is no such thing as 4 street and 3rd ave. I'm not sure if the op used it as an example for this reason or am I being overly pedantic but... there it is.
- JshWright 10y agoAnd maybe the caller is actually in Brooklyn, on 3rd Ave, standing next to the 4th St Basin, and that's what they mean by "4th St" (because they are from out of town, and saw that on a sign). Remember that not everyone who calls 911 in New York City is a local. In fact, given the tourism in the city, I suspect a large fraction of 911 calls are from non-locals (a local is gonna walk right past a drunk sleeping on a bench... a visitor might call it in as a "person down"). Verifying the location of an emergency is literally step 0 in dealing with it. Spending 10 seconds asking some "dumb" questions to rule out confusions that have come up in the past can save a significant amount of time overall.