The emergency phone number you have never heard of that could save your life

10 comments

1. “999-55” silent lifeline, which connects victims to an operator aware that the caller is unable to summon help.

2. how does the “55” track you? i thought the call triangulation wasnt very accurate?

3. I use:

   0118 999 881 999 119 725 3

   Or send an email….

4. Is it 999-55 or 99955…

   Seems like some confirmation in the article would have been useful

5. This isn’t quite true.

   What actually happens is that in the event of *any* silent or abandoned call to 999, the call is transferred to the police along with any location data provided.

   Immediately hitting 55 on answer doesn’t trigger any systems, it just suggests to the police operator when they’ve heard it that this isn’t a pocket dial – they’re still going to step through their decision flow chart to decide whether or not to deploy.

   The most important thing you can do is to make sure that the subscriber address is the address you live at, and if you’re using a PAYG that the number is registered – one of the first actions will be for the control room to ask the telephone company for a subscriber address.

   If you are able to speak, do, if only to unambiguously confirm that this is a live call and that you’re in distress. Even screams and shouts will do, in a pinch.

   The operators are creative – if you’re not on speaker you could easily ask for a takeaway and when they say “you know you’ve called the police”, you can reply with a “yes” and they can then work with you to get units running.

6. This article is plain badly written. The bit which tells you that you need to press the 55 after the call connects is hidden below a lot of information about what I admit sounds like a charity doing extremely valuable work, but the top section should be clearer. 99955 is not a valid number, and trying to call it on mobiles will either not connect (obviously I’m not testing it because I’m not a cunt who wastes 999 operators time) or will connect you to an operator who will assume they’re just receiving a silent call.

7. >More than half of women in the UK are unaware of a potentially life-saving emergency helpline for domestic abuse victims who are too frightened to speak out loud, a new study has revealed.

   I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that more than half of men (who can also be victims of domestic violence) also probably aren’t aware of this potentially life-saving number.

8. There are nothing on it on any social media, this is where influencers could actually do some good during holiday season.

9. The emergency number that you probably don’t know and could save your life…

   … that we’re going to make you read the article to find out.

10. On iPhones, isnt there a press power button 5 times option which also connects silently to EMS?

Comments are closed.