What3words

Dragging up an old thread...

Got an appointment with Devon and Cornwall Police tomorrow and I've been sent a W3W reference - pretty.needed.chill .
Great! Except that it's in Oxfordshire! The post code could be a help but that covers the entire police campus, including the station and headquarters.
 
This is disappointing.

1753437397762.png

Apparently w3w won't reveal their error correction. This is exactly why they are supposed to be better than other systems ;(

ETA: you neglected to mention that pretty.needed.chill is actually IN the River Cherwell.........parking may be an issue.
 
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Nod said:
Dragging up an old thread...

Got an appointment with Devon and Cornwall Police tomorrow and I've been sent a W3W reference - pretty.needed.chill .
Great! Except that it's in Oxfordshire! The post code could be a help but that covers the entire police campus, including the station and headquarters.
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Tell them you misread it and have been waiting in the Caribbean. Claim expenses.
 
Since all this thread, there's been another complication noted.

For example if you were in a city north of Devon and Cornwall, would you use ///hears.crowds.goes or ///cyfoethog.gwyliwch.cyfrifo if you were a Welsh speaker or ///seehund.schnitt.zart if you were a German tourist,
 
Nod said:
Dragging up an old thread...

Got an appointment with Devon and Cornwall Police tomorrow and I've been sent a W3W reference - pretty.needed.chill .
Great! Except that it's in Oxfordshire! The post code could be a help but that covers the entire police campus, including the station and headquarters.
Click to expand...
Ah. I thought pretty.neded.chill was familiar. It's the default location on the w3w website. So the Police have copied that, rather than the actual location. Odd that the w3w customer service person didn't pick that up - it probably happens a lot.

Ah, typo. Meant pretty.needed.chill
 
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JonathanRyan said:
This is disappointing.

View attachment 458740

Apparently w3w won't reveal their error correction. This is exactly why they are supposed to be better than other systems ;(

ETA: you neglected to mention that pretty.needed.chill is actually IN the River Cherwell.........parking may be an issue.
Click to expand...


We've got that far and unless they reply with the correct reference, that's where we'll be going (1/4 hour early to allow time to get to the right place if it's not at the STATION.)

We've had 3 or 4 e-mails from them to tell us the original location (which was moved) to the current location (saying STATION) and the others saying HQ (which is in the same post code and general vicinity as the STATION...)

I'm sure we'll get there eventually!

Oh, it's NOT for a speed awareness course!!!
 
I downloaded to my phone a few years ago and have used it about 4 times. I use it when I leave my car in a large car park such as a country festival where there may be hundreds of cars parked in rows with no markings. As I get out of my car, I save the W3W location and then use this to navigate back to my car later. I have watched people walking up and down the rows in tears looking for their lost cars. It is unlikely that I would now venture out on a long remote walk but I would consider this essential if I did. If reporting an incident or accident in a rural location, it is certainly the easiest way to inform emergency services of the location.

Dave
 
We are moving to a remote, rural cottage.

Conventional satnav systems do a rubbish job of getting you to the front door.

W3W will help visitors, and more importantly, emergency services if needed.
 
Dave Canon said:
If reporting an incident or accident in a rural location, it is certainly the easiest way to inform emergency services of the location.
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As I said above - "Meanwhile latitude/longitude is ubiquitous, free, open source, mature, well implemented - and doesn't have an army of venture capitalists waiting in the wings to monetise it."
 
Contax said:
As I said above - "Meanwhile latitude/longitude is ubiquitous, free, open source, mature, well implemented - and doesn't have an army of venture capitalists waiting in the wings to monetise it."
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I have OS mapping what3words, UK Grid. I use all three. The only one I pay for is OS mapping. To be honest if I had to pay £10 pa for what3words I would do. As someone who is out walking in the Yorkshire Dales most weekends, anything that helps the emergency services get to me quickly is a bonus.

Speaking yesterday to a 3 peaks walk organiser they use what3words as their main location tool. Mainly it is the easiest to use.
 
munch said:
I have OS mapping what3words, UK Grid. I use all three. The only one I pay for is OS mapping. To be honest if I had to pay £10 pa for what3words I would do. As someone who is out walking in the Yorkshire Dales most weekends, anything that helps the emergency services get to me quickly is a bonus.

Speaking yesterday to a 3 peaks walk organiser they use what3words as their main location tool. Mainly it is the easiest to use.
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Welsh, or German.

And what language would you use if you were in Germany?
 
Pound Coin said:
Welsh, or German.

And what language would you use if you were in Germany?
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But I don't travel to Germany and you can use English in Wales. You don't like What3words, that's fine don't use it. But it doesn't mean that it is not effective. or that others shouldn't use it.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
This resurected thread got me interested in geo location so I looked up the Wikipedia article. There's a lot in it...

en.wikipedia.org

Geographic coordinate system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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But almost irrelevant for people like me out in the Dales, and for the emergency services that I will send my What3words (or whatever else I have that works at the time, including an OS map) to tell them where the incident I am at is.
 
My view is that it's a simple, brilliant system that's free for private users.
Yes, there are other ways of fixing position, including celestial navigation for the clever people who understand it and for when the weather's OK, but W3W only requires a phone and doesn't even require a phone signal.

Our farm is almost impossible for visitors to find, Satnav takes people to a spot about 3 miles away, written instructions aren't great because some of the local roads don't have names and there are so few people around that it's hard to find someone who can be asked for directions.

W3W also forms an important part of our emergency action plan - giving emergency services our exact location - and, if any of us need help one of the ways of getting that help is via our whatsapp group of local farmers, which has never been used and hopefully never will be, but it's been tested and works if there's a phone signal - e.g. SOS pretty.needed.chill - that's a backup to our 2-way radio system, essential when there's no phone signal, but our plan still involves W3W
 
AIUI, W3W needs GPS to find your location. If you have satellites "in sight", you can get your unambiguous coordinates.
 
Nod said:
AIUI, W3W needs GPS to find your location. If you have satellites "in sight", you can get your unambiguous coordinates.
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All well if you tell them all the co-ordinates correctly.

We (one of my local walking groups) did an exercise last year relaying coordinates over 3 phones and guess what none of the co ordinates where correct by the time we got to the 3rd phone. What3words worked two out of the three times. Not scientific I know but it convinced the group to now use What3Words as our first means of identifying a location.

JESIP ( joint-emergency-services-interoperability-principles) uses What3Words as one of it's location models. So if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me.

Nothing against any other system, just that I and a lot of other people find What3words easy and reliable. (no system is 100% reliable)
 
Oh, I agree but W3W is as susceptible to being miscommunicated as coordinates. Throw in homophones, plurals, accents etc. and problems creep in.

Not sure if Mountain Rescue like it much and, as my recent experience shows, it does rely on the looker upper actually bothering to make sure they've got it right rather than simply copying down the 3 words that appear when you open the app...
 
Nod said:
Oh, I agree but W3W is as susceptible to being miscommunicated as coordinates. Throw in homophones, plurals, accents etc. and problems creep in.

Not sure if Mountain Rescue like it much and, as my recent experience shows, it does rely on the looker upper actually bothering to make sure they've got it right rather than simply copying down the 3 words that appear when you open the app...
Click to expand...
Mountain Rescue is an interesting one, as a 999/112 won't go directly to them. If someone is lost you will go through to the Police, who will decide if they will call them out. Similar if someone is injured the ambulance service will request MR help. As all UK emergency service can use What3words at their call centres, I see no reason not to use it.

The lady from Yorkshire Ambulance Service who talked to us last week said their proffered means of getting rural locations was What3words.

For me What3words is no more susceptible to be miscommunicated that any other method of communicating coordinates.

As I have said before it is not compulsory to use it, if you don't like it don't use it.
 
Nod said:
Oh, I agree but W3W is as susceptible to being miscommunicated as coordinates. Throw in homophones, plurals, accents etc. and problems creep in.

Not sure if Mountain Rescue like it much and, as my recent experience shows, it does rely on the looker upper actually bothering to make sure they've got it right rather than simply copying down the 3 words that appear when you open the app...
Click to expand...
This Mountain Rescue blog article from 5 years ago looks into pros and cons.

Horses for courses seems to be the message.
 
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I use it for marking where I've seen wild orchids, it makes it much easier for me to re find the general location.
 
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