Follow up from Grub's death

[MSTRS:Me]

Well done Kari. Brett would have been (even more) proud of you for that. As are we all.

[H00dz]

Along with the many others, I thankyou too.....

Northland is safer because of it

[Crisis management]

Good on you Kari, anything that helps improve emergency response is worth pursuing.

I have a couple of comments from the emergency response side of the coin ( I am a coastguard volunteer).

Cell phone location....the best you will get is a general area via the cell sites ie: within 10 kms of cell site ABC, also, due to privacy laws, a search warrant is required to access this data. Maybe when phones have a GPS built in and there is a suitable tracking system you will have some surety of locating a phone but who wants to be found by big brother?

Information supplied to emergency services can be sketchy, incorrect and confused due to stress or a poor understanding of the incident, please note that this is a general observation and is no comment on Bretts' accident. The reason I mention this is that there is a perception that it is easy to understand what action is required from the information provided when in reality its more of a guessing game. Everytime I get dispatched to an emergency job I can guarantee that the initial information I am given will be 80% incorrect. For example, on friday night we were sent to search for a person having fallen out of a kayak in the Hauraki gulf some distance from shore following the sighting of an emergency flare. Two fast response vessels, the police vessel and helicopter responded plus land based police, the end result was that a group of kids let of a flare from land, someone saw some kayaks and assumed it was them and the story had grown from that. The only upside from this was that the coastwatch camera man got some good footage.

If you can take anything from this, then try and remember that it is up to the person making the emergency call to give as much accurate information as possible and have a thought about how you can tell someone where you are, not too hard in a city but the countryside is a big place with few signs. When I'm on the back roads I keep a mental count of how many Kms from the last town I passed thru and the road name.

Good luck with this Kari, please keep us posted about any progress.

[MSTRS:Me]

... and the road name.

And right there is the problem...that Kari wishes to address

[Virago]

Kari, your strength, courage and dignity following this tragic event is inspirational. A job well done. Good on you.

[JMemonic]

Well done, its one more step in the process to improve the services provided.

GPS locations would help as well but they did not have that ability until recently as I understand it.

[Nasty]

The TV segment showed where the ambo was dispatched from and to, but I'd be interested to know the actual location information that was given to the dispatcher during the 111 call.

No amount of investment in systems will ever be able to compensate for dispatchers lacking brain cells, or riders not actually knowing where they are when a bin happens.

Now, one can only guess that those two factors added up to a tragic fuckup in this instance, but it looks like we'll never really know what actually happened, due to some sort of enforced confidentiality? Or is there further information out there?

I am just waiting on the final report .. once i have that I have told them that I would share more information .. its just a draft at the moment

[Sharry]

Well done Kari, you were poised and clear to the point with no mallice overtones. You have done us all proud, especially Brett.

What you are doing for us all on the road is well needed and will save lives

[Winter]

Great job there Kari.. You came across excellently, lots of good clear messages and strong points.

You've done a great thing here :-)

[quickbuck]

As All have said, Well done Kari. That article was tops.

My partner is a motorcyclist, but isn't a Kiwibiker so I filled her in on some of the extra background i have gleaned from here after the article.

She thought the article itself was a big enough wake-up call to joe public as it stood. So I guess that is a job well done right there.

Another thing the whole event has done is made people (all motorists) think about what could happen if they did have an off in a remote place....
Awareness is at least a step in the right direction.

[Edbear]

Kari you were brilliant. Thanks for taking up the cause for all bikers and not giving up on a cause dear to your heart.

And not just bikers, but all travellers! Well done!

Firstly, brilliant presentation Nasty - well done

Gammaguy: All well and good but the area in question (the Forgotten Highway) has little or no cellphone coverage and the same applies to the main route out of Taranaki to the north (SH3) from Urenui to Te Kuiti. If you're lucky enough to need assistance in one of the small pockets of coverage, or someone else can drive, ride or walk to a coverage area, then triangulating onto the cellphone is do-able but also how about Telecon supplying a location of the landline that is used otherwise? Personally though Telecon would be the last people I'd entrust my wellbeing to in such a situation if I had a choice

You make an interesting point. My cellphone has GPS so if I'm in coverage and physically able, I can call the emergency services and say, "I'm at latitude xx and longitude xx, come get me!" But it's not a tracking GPS. I'm going to raise this at work, (TelstraClear), and see what technology may be in the wings.

You did a GREAT job, Kari... I'm proud of you!

As are we all!

[Genestho]

She thought the article itself was a big enough wake-up call to joe public as it stood. So I guess that is a job well done right there.

Another thing the whole event has done is made people (all motorists) think about what could happen if they did have an off in a remote place....
Awareness is at least a step in the right direction.

Well said...

Nice job Kari, well done love

[MadDuck]

No amount of investment in systems will ever be able to compensate for dispatchers lacking brain cells, or riders not actually knowing where they are when a bin happens.

Without taking away from what an awesome job Kari did...... The Scottish representative of them that come and save us (hopefully) got three yes thats three phone calls about where Grubb was and still got it wrong.

[FJRider]

Well done Kari... INDEED.

But what was unsaid, was that ANY improvement in the ambulance call, answering system, will help ALL people who live, work, drive, ride and play, in the lesser populated/less traveled areas of New Zealand. NOT just motorcyclists. To this end, we should be looking at our own areas for "our" names of the areas we love and know. AND PASS THEM ON.

Again, well done Kari.

[KoroJ]

The TV segment showed where the ambo was dispatched from and to, but I'd be interested to know the actual location information that was given to the dispatcher during the 111 call.

.............

I can assure you that one of the calls (from a landline in Tahora) gave the location as "approximately 5 Km east of the Tangarakau gorge". The operator kept asking what the streetname of the road was and, if my memory serves me correctly, I'm sure the local who was making the call said "It's not a street, it's State Highway 43!"

It would seem that part of the problem is a lack of local knowledge in the centralised call centre. Perhaps it would be better if the operators patched the calls through to the reponding centre so that the first response unit establish exactly where they need to be.



Good one Kari!