ICE your phone

[pegkerr]

This was a useful tip passed on by my office manager, who got it from the cell phone company which handles our law firm's account:

Paramedics will turn to a victim's cell phone for clues to that person's identity. You can make their job much easier with a simple idea that they are trying to get everyone to adopt: ICE. ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. If you add an entry in the contacts list in your cell phone under ICE, with the name and phone no. of the person that the emergency services should call on your behalf, you can save them a lot of time and have your loved ones contacted quickly. If you have more than one entry, use ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3, etc. It only takes a few moments of your time to do. Paramedics know what ICE means and they look for it immediately.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I've heard this a few times recently. Does anyone think this is actually worth the bother?

Why don't the paramedics turn to the victim's wallet? What is the liklihood that the victim will be found with his cellphone and without his wallet? What are the odds that simply calling down the list of the last ten numbers dialed won't turn up someone who recognizes the victim from the cellphone number?

I think this is just silly. And I'll bet if you research the "they are trying to get everybody to adopt," you'll find that there isn't much "they" there.

Tell your office manager to look both ways before crossing the street, and not to drink and drive.

B

[gallowglass.livejournal.com]

The scheme was devised for the UK, where the experience of paramedics is that "eight out of ten British people carry no next of kin details. Yet 80% carry a mobile phone, most of whom have it on them all the time." (quoting from the ICE website - http://www.icecontact.com/ ) The percentages are not likely to be anywhere near as striking in the US, which makes the idea less useful over there.

The idea of a standardized contact information format is to save time, providing a definite contact number, rather than a bunch of largely anonymous phone numbers that they'd have to waste time checking out.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Okay. How many people, per year, would this measure help? I suspect it's a very small number. I suspect it's a result of a highly publicized story. Remember, events in the news are -- by definition -- not worth knowing about. They're news. They hardly ever happen. They're outliers.

B

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The whole point of the idea is that it requires social cooperation. It requires enough people deciding to implement it to make it useful (like, for example, the social cooperation that requires everyone to agree before daylight savings time to be implemented). And since I recognize that it will only work if it is widespread, I did my little mite by putting a post in my journal.

[I wrote something else here but decided it was not tactful. So I erased it.]

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I know that. My question is a step before that. Before worrying aobut how to make it work, figure out if is it a good idea in the first place?

Here's another example. Firemen have a problem rescuing children from burning buildings: they don't know what room they're in. So we're asking you, for the sake of your childrens' safety, to lock them in the northeast bedroom at all times. That way firemen always know where they are. Here are two emotional, heart-rending stories of children dying to make my point. Spread the word.

Now of course that's rediculous. No one believes that locking children in a bedroom is a good trade-off for their increased safety in the unlikely event there's a fire and firemen can't rescue them. The cost of making the safety measure "work" is obviously too great.

Not every trade-off is that obvious -- sometimes you need to do some real analysis -- but the process is the same. How does the ICE idea affect cellphone fraud, for example? We know that cellphone fraud is widespread and expensive, and we know that locking your phone is a good idea to help prevent fraudulant charges if your phone is lost and stolen. Also, I recently I wrote an essay about the privacy risks we are increasingly subjecting ourselves to by having lots of sensitive information on our phones and PDAs. In order to implement ICE, we would need to keep our phones unlocked and unprotected by passwords. Does it make sense to put ourselves more at risk from these common thefts in order to make ourselves more secure against this rare but more serious threat? Don't know, but I doubt it.

And that's just one aspect of this off the top of my head. I also wonder if we could do some actual good in the world if we took the people involved in this ICE campagain and gave them something actually helpful to do. I wonder if the false sense of security gained by doing this will help or hurt. I wonder a lot of things.

And all of these things have nothing to do with how to make this idea work. They come before that: whether or not trying to make this idea work is a good thing.

B

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I dunno-- As I said, my town's Fire Department and Police Department are getting in on the act, and I have the impression (from them) that others are doing so, as well.

Certainly, the wallet part kind of annoys me, since I don't HAVE a cel phone. But I don't think it's an entirely bad idea.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the tip; I went ahead and programmed two numbers in.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

This was originally a campaign put about in (I think) the East Midlands area of England. I figure it's not much use until it actually becomes common enough in the US that a paramedic might actually have heard of it. On the other hand, it's not a terrible effort to add one entry to your cell phone address list.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was why I did an article about it-- my Fire Department and Police Department are joining in on a general (though not, yet, totally organized) effort to make ICE in phones more common in the US.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/icephone.asp

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

B

[tiellan.livejournal.com]

I keep a business card in my wallet with all of my emergency information printed on it, but this is a good idea too.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I'm torn between being in the cheering section for anything that makes it possible for paramedics to do their jobs more effectively, and being faintly frazzled at the idea of having all my belongings gone through for this cause.

I also have these ludicrous visions of self-righteous paramedics who miss any info I have in the (paper) engagement calender and my wallet saying defensively, well after the information would have been most useful, "Well, how was I supposed to know? She didn't have a cell phone so I couldn't look her phone numbers, could I?"

Putting paranoia to one side, I suspect it's probably a good plan. Meanwhile, since I have no cell phone nor any intention of having one if I can help it (at least not before I have children of a phone-dialing age), I shall see about making sure that there's something very visible and obvious in my wallet with Julian, Akycha, and Heavenscalyx's contact info, as well as my doctor and allergies. That should do, I imagine.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just did a freakin' article on this.

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

Regardless- this reminds me I don't have that sort of info in my wallet or phone (though all my relatives are labelled Mom, Dad, Sis, etc. so I would think they'd figure it out).