Two stories, one with a less-than-happy ending.
On Monday night, we were going over to someone’s house we hadn’t been to before. I had their address, though, so I entered it into MapQuest. 47 XYZ St., Englewood, CO 80111.
Problem is, I’d put the wrong city and ZIP into my address book. And there is no XYZ St. in Englewood, CO 80111.
Did MapQuest tell me that? No, it didn’t. Or, if it did, it wasn’t obvious.
Did MapQuest tell me it couldn’t find what I was looking for? Nope.
Instead, it put a nice red star in the geographical center of 80111.
Now, I didn’t see XYZ St. there on the map. But that’s not wildly unusual. I assumed it was only visible zoomed in further.
We drove to the wrong ZIP code, and then spend about ten minutes driving around, trying to find the mysterious XYZ St.
Then we used the old-fashioned book of maps, and drove where we were supposed to, half an hour late.
On a less pleasant note, a 911 dispatcher, relying on a new system that didn’t yet have all the streets entered into it, sent an ambulance to the wrong house.
When a 911 call comes from a residence into the Emergency Operating Center, the address and phone number are displayed on the telephone, Salley said. It is like caller identification, based on telephone records.
The dispatcher clicks a box on a computer monitor to transfer that information into the Computer Aided Dispatch system. That system was installed in March and does not yet have all information on Buncombe County roads, Salley said.
At that time, Briarcliff Lane was not in the system. The computer notified the dispatcher of that and asked if he meant Briarcliff Drive. The dispatcher indicated that Briarcliff Drive was the correct street.
That’s where the dispatcher erred, Salley said. When the Computer Aided Dispatch system indicates it doesn’t recognize a particular street, dispatchers are supposed to type the information into the old computer system, which has data on all Buncombe County streets.
The delay cost emergency response half an hour, and the attempted suicide died.
The lessons in both cases? Don’t blindly trust the computer mapping system — and, by the same token, don’t make assumptions about what it’s asking or telling you.