Son was going through a rough patch and was doing some drugs, came home and started to OD on some synthetic weed. Called 911 and asked for an ambulance, they only sent the police and arrested him even though I said no and to leave my house. It fucked my kid up being 17 at the time and has had a record because of it. I'll never call 911 again.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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First time at 8...when my drunk ass neighbour jumped from his 10m high roof and landed on his patio.
Ended with a Helicopter and everything, he actually survived.
Second time was when I was already an EMT to call for backup.
Last time was on Monday to,well, call for backup as an paramedic as radio reception was shit.
My wife and I were out DoorDashing when we still did, and this car in front of us at a green light stopped suddenly and the driver side door of that car flung open and a guy fell out into the street. We pulled up just ahead of him so we could watch at a safe distance and flagged other cars on the way to be cautious. I dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance because I thought the guy was having a heart attack. Cops and ambulance show up after some other drivers pulled cones out of their car to cordon off the area. Dude springs up, looks around confused and wild eyed, just starts punching the cops until he's brought back down to the ground and handcuffed. I felt bad, as it turns out he was high out of his mind on something. I never like calling 911 for obvious reasons, cuz oink and ew, but I just hope the guys gets help. That was the first time. The second and only other time was because a guy who lives in our neighborhood found out his girlfriend cheated on him with one of their mutual friends, who was there this night, got drunk and started to confront him. Then shots were fired and from peeking out the door I saw a lady running with her baby in her arms and screamed "Get that gun away from him!" We called to say shots were fired and the whole mess, only to never have anyone show up. Only thing I know that happened in the next couple weeks as to why it was so quiet lately was that half the people on that side of the apartment complex were evicted. Seems to be a matter of other reasons butl, either way, intense few minutes to say the least.
A year or so before my mom passed, she started having some kind of episode in the middle of a conversation that was like that time in Star Trek where the crew started speaking gibberish, but couldn't understand why nobody understood them. That was my only frame of reference and the paramedics who showed up understood immediately what was happening even if the operator on the phone didn't.
Got to my late 30's before needing to call. This was about 6 years ago. My mother in law was staying with us because her husband passed 3 months prior. She found out later that month she had pancreatic cancer. So my wifes family cleaned out their house and got things in order. She moved in with us maybe a month prior. My wifes sister was with me visiting to see her and my wife left like 30 min to take care of stuff. It was my sister's daughter and my kid who was 3 or 4 at the time. It started out She said she was having trouble breathing and sat on our stairs as her sister tried to get her to calm down since at this point we didnt think much of it. Within a few more minutes she started to panic and so did the sister. The sister started screaming and I called 911. By the time they got here we had already saw her slip out of consciousness while continuing to say i can breath I dont want to die. Paramedics tried for 30 min or so and took her to the hospital were she was pronounced dead. It was a massive heart attack and everyone says there really wasn't much we could have done. That was a bad year, but then we got covid the next year so it just keeps getting better...
Called about a car accident that I was in to get a police report and operator asked if I was hurt. I said I wasn't and they asked me why else was I calling. Soo I just ended the call and went to go fuck myself.
This varies by state, but where I am if no one's hurt and the cars are driveable, it's considered a "non-reportable accident"
Generally speaking, we'll still send cops to take a report if you really want one but it's not really necessary for anything. Mostly it's only needed if you're it a company vehicle or something and your employer wants it for your file or something.
Otherwise, you just exchange info and let your insurance companies sort it out, the police don't really have anything else to do with it at that point.
I believe some areas and departments have an online form you can fill out to generate a crash report.
If the police are very busy, they may tell you to just exchange info, do the online report, or go to the station later to file one, otherwise you might have to sit out on the side of the road for sometimes several hours waiting for an officer while they deal with higher priority incidents.
If there are injuries, or if the cars aren't driveable, that does require a police report and will have a higher priority response because of it.
Again, that varies a lot from one state to another, I'm only speaking about the situation where I work.
I was with my girlfriend and my grandfather had called and asked me to pick him up some Popeyes. I drive over there, grab his order and wait at a red light.
there was a woman who was walking with her hair in front of her face and a limp. told my gf "damn, kinda early to be high eh? its only 2pm" and chuckled.
the woman approached my car and knocked on my window. scared shitless, I crack the window just a tiny bit and say hello. she asked for help, throws her hair backwards and reveals blood all over her face... she was dripping blood everywhere, visual is burned in my memory forever... she couldn't have been older than 16
she tells me that she got jumped for her phone by a group of kids, I tell her to get in the back of my car and I drive towards where she said she got jumped just in case I can find who jumped her while dialing 911. scary stuff...
The first time I called 911 was actually to avoid being involved in/the victim of a crime.
I (~16m) was walking home very late at night with a friend, when a pickup truck passed us on the road, then suddenly pulled over blocking the sidewalk ~10m ahead of us.
4 guys got out and began to walk towards us rather aggressively.
I pulled out my phone and very loudly said 'Hey google, Dial 911'.
All 4 stopped in their tracks. My friend and I didn't stop; we walked around them and then their truck, and continued onto a path vehicles couldn't follow, then we took off running as soon as we had rounded the corner out of sight.
For the record; I learned that day, google assistant won't actually dial emergency numbers for you. (that may have changed, it's been a long time and I'm not going to play with testing that) I'm really glad this encounter didn't end poorly because apparently I hadn't actually called for help.
These days at least some voice assistants can do it, I've gotten 911 calls that way. Might depend on the phone and software version.
Also fall or accident detections from someone dropping their phones.
And some phones have a setting where it'll initiate a 911 call if you press the power button 5 times or something like that.
Always a good idea to take a few minutes to go through your phones settings to see which of these features you have turned on and whether you actually should have those turned on. You wouldn't believe the amount of butt dials we get.
Also a reminder that deactivated phones without service can still call 911, a lot of people give their old phones to little kids to play with and we get a lot of calls that way. And little kids sometimes say some wild stuff, so you might just get fire engines showing up at your house because a kid said some magic words and we have to err on the side of caution.
And since I'm on that topic now, every agency varies a bit. Until fairly recently where I work, we could ignore most butt dials if we didn't hear anything suspicious, but they recently changed that policy, so now as long as we have a decent location ping from your phone, we're dispatching officers to all of them and have to call them back. I don't think most of our departments put a whole lot of effort into trying to track people down, mostly they drive through the neighborhood looking for anything suspicious, and maybe try calling back themselves, but it's still kind of a waste of time in most cases.
At my agency though, if you call accidentally but stay on the line and confirm there's no emergency, we can still ignore it as long as we don't hear anything suspicious going on. The second you hang up though without making contact, we have to enter the call, and try calling you back.
Protip- if we call you back, you don't really have to answer or answer any questions if you do. But if you answer we have to try to verify your location, and if you give us that, a cops may still gonna come knocking at your door even if we tell them you said there was no emergency. Some cops and departments will take it at face value and disregard from there but it's out of our hands at that point.
You're not gonna get in trouble for an accidental call, it's not a big deal, I get dozens, maybe hundreds of them every day. But if you want to avoid the aggravation, either stay on the line or ignore any incoming calls.
Again, those policies will vary a bit from one agency to another, I can only speak for where I work.
the power button emergency mode is soo useless to me, I've only ever accedentaly used it and i can't turn it off on a Samsung device only change it from 112 to 911 to hopefully have it not call an emergency number in my country.
Just commenting so hopefully I remember to check back in on this thread later, I work in a 911 dispatch center.
Currently I'm on my break, but we're dealing with some high winds knocking down trees and power lines and such and things so things are kind of blowing up for us (sometimes literally, more than a few transformers have popped) if things die down later I'll try to chime in, answer questions, maybe share some stories.
Neat, be interesting to hear from the horses mouth. (At it were.)
Dunno if I could do your job, good on ya. All the times I've had to phone 911 they've been calm and collected and it's certainly helped keep me calm as well. (The above story sadly is just the first time.)
Yeah that's kind of the goal. At my dispatch center we have this big tacky sign by one of our entrances "The calm voice in the night"
To which I always kind of add in my head "asking you to please step outside and talk to the officer knocking at your door"
To get to your main question, my first time calling 911 was for my parked vehicle (well technically my dad's vehicle, I was about 18, still living at home and using my parents cars since they had 3) getting hit and ran at my job (different job)
Nothing too special there. I didn't see it but a couple other people did. It was a work truck that did it, and they were able to get the company name for me. Gave them the location, description of the truck, and waited around for an officer to come take a report. I take a good handful of calls like that every single day now.
Parents still have that vehicle too. 1993 Ford ranger, just recently rolled over 100k miles, I'm proud to have been driving it when it happened, had to borrow it to move some stuff and the timing worked out. I love that truck.
The other guy of course denied everything, and there wasn't really any conclusive evidence that pinned it to a specific person or vehicle for that company, so nothing much came of it, and all the damage was a broken tail light, not really worth making an insurance claim over or making much of a fuss about. Another guy I worked with worked part time for a mechanic and hooked me up with a good deal on a new tail light assembly. Swapped it out right there in the parking lot of the pizza shop I worked at one night.
I did chime in with some thoughts and rants on some of the other replies here in case you haven't seen them.
Driving between fields on a bike with my 5yo son on the back.
Noticed a person lying between the mounts of an asparagus field a little bit off, not moving.
Some offroad meters later we were standing besides him.
I checked for life signs, he was still alive, but not responsive.
Temperatures were around 10°C and sinking, so potentially life-threatening.
Called 112 (German emergency line). Lady on the other end was very friendly and well structured, asked me all the relevant details.
Just as she was about to send an ambulance, the man suddenly moved.
I kept the emergency line active while I tried to bring him to full consciousness and talk to him.
After a while he stood up slightly unsteady.
Did speak almost no German (nor English), only some Eastern European language.
But was enough to make it clear to me that he just had been drinking a little too much and felt fit to go home by himself.
Told the lady on the line that the crisis had been averted. She was very positive overall and told me that I had done exactly the right thing by calling.
Don't be afraid to call!
Family argument got so loud and I got scared, like it felt like there was about to be a fight, or maybe there was already a fight... memory is blurry... I remember one of those incidents, either my parents or my older brother threw objects at each other...
I called and didn't feel brave enough to actually say anything, just hung up. Nothing happened.
Oh jeez the flashbacks are coming back...
this happens a lot, I would often just have 911 ready
it's not like I trust cops, there's no other option, so I was just yolo-ing it, I was scared, idk what I'm supposed to do.
one time I got through and like just let the phone listen to the argument in the background, but then I got so scared I hung up
again, nothing happened, I was more afraid of my parents getting mad at me for getting the law involved.
its always just parents vs older brother arguments...
you gotta understand, this is the brother that I remember when I was like 5 or something, he tied me up with zipties, and once I got so scare of him chasing me around the house, my undeveloped brain made the stupid decision to just leave the apartment and I went looking for my mother at her workplace.
I think I hung up on 911 because I still... dispite being a decade here, felt alien to this place. Abusive family members felt more "closer" than everyone else in society.
wtf
If we were still in China, I might've have the courage to actually say "family violence" into the phone. (and probably get ignored since China doesn't care about family violence anyways)
oh fuck fuck fuck that memory was so scary.
not just once, it happened multiple times
thinking about it makes my heartbeat go up
Childhood trauma is horrible, I'm sorry ): you deserved a safe home, and it's tragic you felt so scared that you had to call the cops.
000 here is Australia. First time was a school friend came off his bike and dislocated his kneecap. Second was when I flayed my left arm. Third was when my cousin got home drunk as a skunk after rolling out of a moving taxi and getting pretty banged up. Fourth was to report a fire on the side of the highway during bushfire season.
In Australia we don't have to pay thousands of dollars for an ambulance or for medical care. My friend who dislocated his kneecap was taken to hospital free of charge and had a quick surgery and immobilisation of the knee.
When I flayed my arm it was a fairly gory laceration down to the bone and required surgery to fix.
Overall the staff were extremely professional and understood what was happening quickly. They provided great advice and organised for help to arrive promptly. My experience with the ambulance was great, same with the whole hospital system, and I am happy to pay taxes for it.
First time living alone. Neighbor had some unwelcome company. Gun shots ensued. I laid down in the bathtub and called 911 for the first, and hopefully, last time. Not a great night.
At that same place, a guy once knocked on my back window to ask if I wanted to smoke meth with him. I have never smoked meth and this was the first and only time ive ever seen this man. I asked him wtf his problem was and he said he was hiding from the cops which opened up so many more questions than I wanted to actually ask him. So I told him about a secluded spot (allegedly/parody/etc) down the very narrow alley he definitely struggled to fit into and he crab walked the rest of the way down, never to bother me again. I fucking hate texas.
According to the training at various jobs I've held, if gunshots are likely to be a threat, you should lay down wherever is available and put your knees under your chest to kink up your body.
The reasoning given was that bullets tend to travel in a straight line, so if you minimize the straight lines in your body, you're in less danger. This never really made sense to me, but it's what I was officially told.
If you were in something like a cast iron tub, that might protect you, but I doubt any modern tub would make much of a difference.
I'm glad you survived your experience!
Very good information to have. I will hopefully never have a reason to use it, but if i do? It's Toynbee that saved my life ig lol. In this case tho, I had just finished brushing my teeth, so the tub just seemed the intuitively correct spot to curl up and cross those fingers. The tub wasnt made of anyrhing special, so had a stray been loosed my way, I may have had some very different content to bring to this thread.
And thanks. Im honestly surprised all 3 of us (not to mention the other neighbors and their pets) did. The unwelcome guest was the only to recieve injury in the exchange (besides the number of broken things and holes in walls ofc), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared for my life during or psychologically unscathed by the event. Thank god for talk therapy
I was driving behind someone who was going way too fast and recklessly. Not on the highway or anything, a city street that people live on, walk on, etc. When he opened his door and dropped an empty liquor bottle on the ground I called 911. Followed him as safely as I could for a little while to try to give the best info about his location. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even dispatch someone, let some catch him. But man, that boiled my blood. Piece of trash two times over.
I work in 911 dispatch, reckless driver calls are one of the more annoying calls for us to handle
And to be clear, I'm not saying don't call for a reckless driver, I've done it myself a couple of times since I've been working here. They are an emergency and we do treat it as such, but they're still a pain.
This isn't directed at you specifically, this is just a general rant on the topic.
First of all, we never want anyone to follow a reckless driver. If they're speeding, aggressively weaving through traffic, running red lights, etc. and you're trying to keep up with them guess what, we've got two reckless drivers now.
And of course if they think you're following them, they're probably going to drive even more recklessly, or worse they do something stupid like try to run you off the road or pull a gun on you or something. Crazy shit happens like that all the time, I live and work in what I'd consider a pretty safe area, but barely a week goes by where I don't see a call go in about someone waving a gun in traffic. This week it was a fucking shotgun.
But of course no matter how much we tell people not to follow, some idiots want to play at being an action hero and won't stop. The worst about this is probably off-duty officers, it's like dude you don't have flashing lights on your personal vehicle, you're not in uniform, and you're not getting paid for this shit, the fuck are you doing? You look for all the world like some crazy wannabe vigilante, and that's kind of what you actually are right now.
At least at my agency, if you just happen to be heading the same direction as them, we'll stay on the line giving our cops location updates, but again, we really don't want you following them.
The other issue is that often there's just not a cop conveniently nearby and available. In the area I work, we have some semi-rural areas, with towns that are physically large, but low population so nothing much ever happens there, and there might only be one or two officers on duty at any given time, and that's all they really need. If they're tied up on something or just happen to be on the other side of the town, odds are they can't catch up in time. They might make a real effort to do it, but the odds aren't in their favor.
Then we have smaller, denser towns with a lot of officers, but a lot of those towns keep their officers busy. Is it worth diverting an officer from a domestic for a reckless driver that they may not be able to catch up to? Probably not in most cases.
And sometimes you're crossing jurisdictions, so even if we're giving them constant updates, we can only get the information passed along to the next department down the roads so quickly and we don't know where they may be turning up ahead to try to get someone in position.
There's one highway in my county where different stretches of it are covered by different departments. Depending on traffic you could pass through parts of it covered by 2 different state police barracks and 4 different local departments across 3 counties in the space of about 10 minutes, and you can add in a few more departments if they get off the highway at certain points and make certain turns. Trying to get someone in a position to intercept there is a nightmare, and you might have to get transferred between a couple different dispatch centers along the way.
There's also location. Yes we get a location from your phone, but it's not always super accurate, and it doesn't always update quickly, which makes it almost useless when we're trying to pinpoint a moving vehicle. If they're flying along at 60mph, they might be a half mile away from where we got our last ping before it updates again, and that ping might only be accurate to within a few hundred meters which could put them somewhere on any number of different roads.
So we're really relying on our callers to give us a good location, and frankly people just never have any clue where the hell they are, the name of the road, an address a cross street, a nearby business (that's something identifiable, because dude there are like 5 Sunocos along that main road in that town, you need to be a little more specific) and of course trying to get a direction of travel is like pulling teeth. I don't need north/south/east/or west even, just something like "they're heading towards the mall" wound be great.
And even getting a vehicle description from our callers is an adventure sometimes. You wouldn't believe how many people out there can't tell if they're looking at a sedan or a pickup truck when it's right there in front of them, let alone a color, make/model, or license plate number.
And let's say we actually manage to get a good description, we get a cop out there and he's following behind the vehicle. How many of them keep driving like assholes with a cop right behind them? Not many. At that point it's your word against theirs, and the cop isn't witnessing them doing anything wrong. Sure, sometimes it happens, but most of the time there's nothing actionable going on by the time the cops get out there. Maybe they can drum up enough of a reason to pull them over, but if they didn't see anything serious and the driver doesn't appear visibly intoxicated, what can they really do from that point?
And of course you also get the really delayed and vague reports like "a red car cut me off somewhere near a Starbucks at about 8 this morning" when it's like 9 pm and they have no other description. What are we honestly supposed to do with that?
But man, when the stars align and we can actually get a cop out to pull over a reckless driver, at least I personally think that's one of the most satisfying calls I can take.
This all makes so much sense, thanks for sharing your perspective as an insider!
I completely agree about reckless driving to be a vigilante being just as reckless. That's why I've never called one in before this, if they're on the highway going 90 mph they're in my view for about 30 seconds.
In this particular case, we were in city traffic. This dude kept slamming on the gas whenever the light turned green but would still stop at the red lights. I basically "followed" him in that I kept driving the same speed and all, but skipped my intended turn in order to stay behind him. This let me catch up at the red lights enough times to get his plate and an accurate description of the car. Then I kept behind him until I was off the phone with dispatch so I could give the most up-yo-date possible cross street. I let them know that and the direction he was heading and them continued on my way home.
This also all happened less than 1/4 mile from a police station so I was hoping something might come of it. But I live in a high-crime city with much bigger problems, so these kinds of things are often not prioritized. But I do think that these are the types of crimes that in some ways allow the worse shit to proliferate, because it allows people to engage in antisocial behavior with no consequences. I think the total disregard I see drivers engage in where I live is indicative of a deeper lack of empathy that informs criminal behavior in general.
Also, funny story, I'm back at work tonight, and had an off duty officer calling in a reckless driver
Wanted to keep following them
Crossed over the border of 3 different towns
And no officers available anywhere near where they were
It's like he had some kind of reckless driver bingo card he was trying to fill out
This also all happened less than 1/4 mile from a police station
It's also worth considering that most of the time there's usually not a whole lot of officers just loitering around the police station, most of them are out on patrol somewhere else in their town.
They might have someone on desk duty, but generally they're kind of needed there in case someone walks in, or they're handling dispatch duties, paperwork, etc. or may be injured and on light duty so really can't be out responding to incidents.
In my county most of the time the people in the station are just office staff and not cops at all.
They may be in and out of the station a few times during the day, but often that's because they're doing something there, like dropping off evidence of meeting with a complainant where they can't exactly drop everything to go respond to another call unless it's a big priority.
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What if there first time I called 911 I didn't have to call 911?
When I was 6, I decided it was time for my 4 year old brother to learn how to call 911. We were in like a filenes basement or something, and while my mom was shopping, wandered to the back of the store, and in the hallway with the bathrooms there was a payphone. So I picked it up, showed him how to dial 911, then handed him the receiver, told him that when someone picked up to say what was wrong, answer their questions, etc. I had no idea you could call 911 without a dime on a payphone, so when he started talking, I thought he was pretending. He said something like 'hey, im hurt, and i dont know... were in a store.' At that point some lady came into the hallway and was giving us a dirty look, so I hung up the phone and took him back to where my mom was.
Shortly afterward, we moved stores. Again I took spotted a random payphone, and took the opportunity to educate my sibling. This time he dialed, and told them hed fallen down, and bonked his head and was in a random store, surrounded by clothes. We then hung up and went to go find some toys to play with.
After that, it was time for lunch. When we went to food court, we noticed there were tons of cops everywhere. My mom said something about it, and my brother chipped in, 'maybe its cus I told them i booked my head!' And I told him 'no silly, that was pretend, remember?' And he said 'oh yeah..." and that was that.
Hahaha my story is similar but not nearly as fun.
I went for a walk, back in those days "go outside and play" meant I don't want to see you until the sun goes down, so I walked to strip mall where the video rental store we went to at the time was, as well as a few other places and a safeway we shopped at.
I was however old you would be between grade 2 and 5, and started playing with a phone. And kind yourself I thought you had to put money in it for it to work. I knew how to read and PAYphone seemed pretty self explanatory so I started pressing buttons pretending to call people. Well I had learned about 9-1-1 recently so I pressed those numbers and kept playing around. Well I didn't have the headset near me but I did realize afterwards i did hear a voice though not what they were saying.
It wasn't until I heard the sirens that i clued into why I was hearing them. I definately ran away thinking the cops were looking for me, so I ran into the bush where I knew some places to hide because of course the cops knew who I was and that it was me who used the phone without paying and they were looking for me to be arrested and that I was gonna go to jail forever if they caught me. They didn't because I was so good at hiding if course
Not exactly 911, but somewhat similar. A few years ago my wife & I were in a rental SUV while on vacation. It was a fairly new car with only something like 2000 miles on it. We were in the third lane of a 4 lane highway when a drunk driver hit us from behind with almost no warning. It caused our car to spin 360 degrees across 3 lanes before coming to a stop in the breakdown lane.
Within about 5 seconds of the car coming to a stop we heard a voice asking if we’d been in an accident and were we ok. It turns out the rental car had one of those OnStar types of services. We were so pumped full of adrenaline that it was all just a blur as we tried to remember what highway we were on, near what exit, etc. We were so panicked… Luckily a state trooper on a routine patrol stopped maybe a minute later so we didn’t have to keep trying to figure out how to tell the OnStar person where we were.
My model female cousin (usually most of those details wouldn't matter, but they sort of do in this anecdote) once broke down on the side of the road in broad daylight. Apparently someone, a man, pulled over and offered to help her, but then immediately started attempting to abduct her.
I was a kid when all of this happened, so all I know is what I overheard my mom saying on the phone when relaying the story to someone else; but apparently the cousin in question decided "I'm either going to die here or get away, I'm not going to let him take me." From my memory of this secondhand story, she screamed, shouted and struggled, but was entirely ignored by everyone traveling the busy highway where she'd broken down. Eventually an off-duty cop (this was in the late nineties, I think) stopped at the side of the road and rescued her. I don't know what happened after (except that said cousin is still around).
I'm proud of her for defending herself. So was my mom, which is why I overheard that story.
I was a teen, staying up late, probably watching videos on my phone when I heard arguing from down the street. I peeked out of my bedside window. I couldn't really see them, but it was a couple who got lost at night. I listened to them arguing for some time, annoyed at first, trying to figure out if I could help them somehow, or could at least let them know to tone it down. I couldn't make everything out, but I believe at one point the woman shouted "hit him". It took me a moment to summon the courage to call the police, wondering if this was really an emergency, but as they were still arguing I called it in, nervously shaking.
I told them that I felt the woman was threatening the man, and they agreed to send someone over. Ten minutes later they got back into the car and drove off before the police arrived.
One time coming back from work late at night there was a car stopped in the road about 2 houses down from my house. There was a couple arguing, one of them standing outside the cars the other one inside.
They were yelling and making a bit of a ruckus, but nothing that was exactly going to wake up the neighbors (although that may say more about how few fucks anyone in that neighborhood gave than about how loud they were being)
And honestly I would have been happy to leave them to it, even though it was like 11pm, except that they were blocking the road and I wanted to go to bed.
They were oblivious to me sitting behind them, flashing my high beams, I may have even honked at them, it's been probably 15+ years so I can't remember for certain.
So I called 911, gave them the details, turned around and went around the block to get home.
Sat on my porch for a few minutes watching the show to make sure it didn't escalate (didn't really think it was going to, my neighborhood was pretty chill overall, we just had a few loudmouths who didn't know how to shut up) until the cops arrived, then I went in and went to bed. Don't know what happened from there, I assume the cops basically just told them to shut up and go home.
If they just pulled over they could have kept arguing all night for all I cared. I would've slept through it.
I was driving on the highway when the truck in front of me started swerving subtly and strangely. I told my copilot that the truck driver was probably texting.
As I changed lanes to pass the truck, I asked my copilot if they could see the truck driver texting. But I couldn’t pass the truck because the truck swerved violently to the lane I was going to use.
That’s when it hit me: this driver was very drunk. I immediately grabbed my phone and gave it to my copilot and told them to call the police. I was horrified because the truck was massive and we were getting close to a highway exit that sometimes has traffic.
We gave the police the details: the license plate, the location, the way the guy was driving, and they said they were going to send someone.
I stayed behind the truck for a couple of minutes. We didn’t want to pass him and have him crush our car. So we just looked at how this drunk guy swerved, accelerated, and broke erratically.
After some time, we finally got to the area with traffic, and luckily the truck driver stopped and didn’t crash into anything. We heard sirens behind us and that’s when I decided to finally pass the truck and keep driving.
It's possible the driver was falling asleep. I drive all over for work and I've been there. I pull over these days.
I also, over 20 years ago when I was an idiot kid, used to drive drunk.
I was a far greater danger exhausted than drunk.
Huh. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, maybe it wasn't drunk driving. Maybe it was sleep-deprivated driving. I guess we'll never know.
I've called for drunk or similarly erratic drivers a few times. One of them was in a tanker truck and had several near-misses before he found a place to stop. The cops started following and he tightened up his driving. I'm not sure if they actually contacted him.
The conservatives were elected and with that comes their usual slew of social cuts. This time it was apparently cuts to caring for people with permanent brain trauma. I worked downtown a lot and seen this guy collapse at a bus stop and start convulsing on the ground. My first thought was "Why is this guy on the ground, why is he napping there?". Props to the Indigenous girl that probably deals with this shit all the time back home with her traumatized elders; she looked me in the eye and told me to call 911, understanding I had no idea what was going on. So I did and the operator gave a scripted list of questions regarding the guys info which I didn't know any of it. The paramedics came to get him and I left.
I seen the same guy collapse at another bus stop a few weeks later, and again couple days after that. Dude should have seriously still been in the hospital, but fascists do what fascists do. Ofc, maybe he just left the hospital on his own accord, but the elections had just finished a short while before and we had a new, right-wing, dumbass premier that hated poor people, especially poor, disabled people.
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I was commissioning a new phone system for a customer and as part of the process we are required to test 000 or 112. Pretty easy, called the number gave then the approved speel of this is only a test call for a new phone system and asked them to tell me what number I was presenting.
Never had to call because of an actual problem.
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I was sitting at a stop sign, waiting to turn right, and watched a horrible car accident happen right in front of me. A small car had pulled out into the intersection just before I pulled up to the stop. It slowed down, in the middle of the road, maybe it stalled, I don't know. I looked to the left and saw a pickup truck coming around the curve, going too fast, straight toward the car. The truck hit the small car so hard that it launched into the air and rolled, landing on its roof. A couple got out of the small car, apparently uninjured. I read in the news the next day that the truck driver died.
I'd had a cell phone for less than a year at that point, this was a long time ago. I called 911, and by the time I was done with the call, traffic had backed up behind the cars, and people were out surrounding both cars. So, I just continued on home.
Used to call them all the time as part of a job working university campus security. We knew them, they knew us, no big deal. We were briefed each year on how to talk to them, what order to give descriptions of people’s attire for example (top-down, inside-out), the specific phonetic alphabet they used, a map of campus with cardinal directions, all that stuff. Not a huge deal.
The overwhelming thing I remember is a sense of "Huh, I guess this is it."
There was a possum in the middle of a busy road, acting oddly. Walking in slow circles, pausing to stare, wandering back and forth.... just generally acting odd. I was concerned it might be rabid, and nobody else had called 911 yet, so I did. Gave them the info, they connected me with the local dispatcher, and that was that. Didn't stick around to see what happened.
When I got home I found out that Possums are almost never rabid. Poor thing had probably been hit by a car. Animal control probably would've been a better option, but when I'd called I was actually worried for anyone else who stumbled into it.
Can't recall the first with certainty, but I think it was when I was driving in a heavy snowstorm on the highway and witnessed an 18-wheeler jackknife in the opposing lane, eventually coming to a rest in the divider. Since stopping was only going to put me in danger, I had it call it in and give the mile marker.
I'm fairly certain it wasn't a medical emergency, but given the snowy conditions it wasn't going to be fun for anyone involved.
15 years ago, young student, I'm walking home around midnight. In the middle of a bridge I see a human shape jumping in the water. I'm not 100% sure. I ask a group of people further up on the bridge if they saw anything, they didn't, but said I still should call 112.
One or two police cars came, and then one (or 2?) fire truck. Lots of people. Some went with full diving equipment in the water.
They couldn't find anyone, said it was surprising as the water was very low. The fireman captain gave me the stinkeye.
Police had left their lightbar on and the car wouldn't start (I think that was the reason) so I helped to push.
I had to come to the police station and tell what I saw many, many times.
Only years later did I realize I was being interrogated, to find out if my story had holes. I was quite naive (dumb works too).
I wasn't drunk, depressed, or had any kind of weird fantasies that would make me want to invent a story. It's the only time I called the cops in my life.
All cops were friendly, even though they must've thought I was lying or had too much imagination.
Did someone jump? Now I think not. But at the time I really thought there was a possibility, and I wouldn't take any chances. I just didn't realize how many people and resources would be involved.
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I've never had to be the one to call, which is good, my brain and words would just be going "the thingy is doing thingy! Help!"
Closest as we smelled burning in the house and called the non emergency number. Fire department is literally within walking distance but they sent an entire truck...
A wooden spoon had fallen in the dishwasher and into the heating element. It was smoldering.
In hindsight, I should have called it when a gang of thugs broke into my home, stole my medicine, tied me up, and threatened to make me their prisoner to be raped for over a decade, but at the time it seemed like I could not call the police on those thugs because those thugs were the police.
I was in a car accident. On my way back to the office from lunch out and this woman made a left turn from the opposite side in front of me. I basically t-boned her at 50-55mph. We were both okay, just shocked, but our cars were blocking the intersection. She kept saying I was going too fast and that she was driving home from church. I just sat down on the sidewalk waiting for cops and tow truck to show up. Funny enough I remember, even though my car couldn’t go anywhere, I turned off the engine, got out, and still locked the car.
I had to hitch a ride with the tow truck to their office so I at least had some shelter (middle of summer with no shade around) and wait for a taxi to pick me up. The other woman had her husband pick her up.
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