A few times over the last couple decades. Most serious case was a girlfriend at the time having a seizure. Operator asked if I tried turning her on her side, which I then did and that snapped her out of it. While she is coming out of her daze on the couch I explained to her what happened and when she found out I had called 911, she freaked, because she had a warrant out for her arrest (from previous unrelated things). Runs out the door....right into the arms of a cop. On the one hand she hated me for ending up back in jail, on the other hand the jail guards were telling her I saved her life.
Other times I called 911 were nothing like the above.
1. Driving-never someone else's accident, only my own (wintery conditions, just me going off the road or hitting a deer), non-emergency number just gets defaulted to 911, don't know if that's all the time or just during evening/night, so I immediately start off with "this isn't really an emergency, but....".
2. Saw smoke coming from the woods. Was worried it was the start of a forest fire, but it was just a controlled burn. There was a sign posted about the burn, but considering I was several hundred meters away I couldn't see it of course.
3. Busted window of my house. Window on basement door, 1000 cracks on it, but still, somehow intact (wasn't broke to gain access to inside the house- so no burglary. No glass on ground, but window obviously needed to be replaced). Cop said it looked pretty intentional (vandalism). Since it was the basement door, don't see it all the time so don't know how long it had been like that (if it happened while we were away for a couple hours in the last 24 hours, or if our kids did it by accident and didn't want to admit it...). Thinking about it later, I think I know when it happened, but can't be 100% sure.
Thinking about it later....I remembered something I did (but I didn't break the window unless there was some serious breaking of the laws of physics!). There was a small rock in my driveway, so I picked it up and throw it towards the ditch that already has tons of rocks because it's an area that gets all the runoff water from whenever it rains. A few seconds later (can't recall exactly how many seconds later it was-whether it was 3 or 5 or 10+) I thought I heard something like glass breaking but it didn't seem too close to me/from my house but that could be because my hearing isn't great. It could not have been my rock unless the rock took a boomerang-like flight pattern.... it's just not possible. Ricochet of the rock coming back after hitting a rock in the ditch? Nah, not unless my rock bounced back like 50 feet, which wouldn't happen even if I had hit a trampoline positioned exactly right trying to do that. Kids were playing in backyard at the time (I could see enough of back yard to know my rock wasn't going to hit them). I think it was one of them. They said they knew nothing of what happened to the window, didn't hear or see anything.
It happens so often, there are actually ad campaigns telling people to don't just hang up when you realize you accidently called them. Need to let them know it was a mistake so they don't send people to that area looking to see if anyone is in trouble.
Just a simple button that is easily pressed when the screen lock is on? I get they want to make it easy to call for emergency if you have someone's phone but don't know the password, but should require a little more button pressing/swiping than just one press. Stepdaughter when she first got her phone she pocket dialed twice, once at home, the other when she was at school (cops came to her house that time, because they knew the number....good luck finding which kid in school it was if they didn't know the number). Good thing for her it never happened a third time, otherwise that would have been Strike 3 for her and we take her phone away (easier solution is just not use the stupid lock screen).
