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The EU has designated six-digit numbers starting with 116 as "harmonised services of social value"[0] which are reserved for a specific purpose. For example:
by M2Ys4U 7y ago
The EU has designated six-digit numbers starting with 116 as "harmonised services of social value"[0] which are reserved for a specific purpose.
For example:
116 000 is for missing children;
116 006 is for victims of crime;
116 111 is a child helpline;
116 117 is for non-emergency medical assistance; and
116 123 is for people in emotional distress.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonised_service_of_social_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonised_service_of_social_v...
- piker 7y agoThat strategy seems silly at first glance. All of these are so fact-specific and infrequent that the victim will not have committed them to memory and would be better served with a 116 + dispatcher to triage?
- CydeWeys 7y agoYup. The only short numbers of this form I have memorized are 311 and 911. Both use human operator dispatch. I'm not going to memorize and successfully recall a much larger number of these phone numbers, especially given that I probably won't even use a single one of them anytime in my life.
- schoen 7y agoI've been confused about how Brazil has more than a dozen of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Brazil#Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Brazil#Pu... (I don't think this list is complete!). It's hard for me to think that many Brazilians remember all of these -- the Wikipedia article suggests that most don't -- and it's also unclear to me, for example, how one should choose which police force to call when needing police assistance. On the other hand, perhaps several of these were created in order to provide a free call option for accessing public services, and in some cases one that would be usable by functionally illiterate citizens.
- CydeWeys 7y agoWow, that's way too many. Unless each number is going to be targeted with a long-term awareness campaign (as 311 and 911 are, and as the suicide hotline number is likely to be), it's hard to justify them. No one's gonna remember them.
- schoen 7y agoI saw a printed chart of them in a payphone in Brazil (which seems genuinely useful if the reader knows how to distinguish, for example, which police force to contact in an emergency), but payphones are also becoming rarer in Brazil and I'm not sure that the list of these numbers is ubiquitous.
- louiechristie 7y agoToo bad in the USA's FCC 70 page report there are 0 mentions of the number 116 123. (https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-359095A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-359095A1.pdf) 116 123 is the new standard for emotional support helplines in the 28 EU countries and has already been implemented by France, Germany, Ireland and United Kingdom. You would've thought 116 123 at least deserves consideration by the USA, even if they didn't adopt it? Also, while they are at it, it's a shame the USA don't fully implement 112 alongside 911 as their emergency number, because Americans are starting to look like the odd ones out - see this world map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_number)#/media/File:Emergency_telephone_numbers_in_the_world.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_numbe... I heard, these days, people go on holidays & vacations abroad, and emergencies & illness don't care about national boundaries. On a positive note, it's nice to hear about Americans caring for sick people.
- schoen 7y agoI think GSM has some kind of mapping for emergency numbers internationally, so it should work if people dial either 112 or 911 on a GSM phone. (Of course, this wouldn't work on a land line.)