Knowing the history of W3W I'm not particularly keen on them, but I don't think this is actually an incredibly strong criticism of the system. Yes, it's possibl

Knowing the history of W3W I'm not particularly keen on them, but I don't think this is actually an incredibly strong criticism of the system. Yes, it's possible to make mistakes with this system, and there are probabilities of the mistaken words putting you in the wrong place - but the odds are fairly low, and it misses one key point: W3W helps you communicate a direction, it doesn't need to be the only method of communicating the location. Taking the River Clyde example - what's the likelihood of you being in either of those locations, and telling people the W3W phrase alone? There's no way you're going to do that. The first thing you're going to say is "I'm on the north bank of the Clyde" or "I'm standing right next to the M8 motorway". The basic way of safely communicating information is very simple - communicate more information so that the receiver can use the consistency of the extra information to check what they're receiving is right. If you're phoning the police and give them W3W, they might mishear - but what's the likelihood they mishear in a way that is consistent with their knowledge about which cell tower your mobile phone is pinging off.