[tomcooks]

Why would I read only the headline and comment? To gain imaginary internet points which I can spend literally nowhere? No worries my friend, I don't have ADHD and can read 2 minutes long articles.

It's not clear to me how a stupid system like this is used in favour of, say, 5 numbers+5 numbers (4 decimals coordinates lead to a ~5.5m radius)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean with "high risk of errors on both ends", as there is no chance of mispelling. How do I know that? Because numbers are used in military standards for comms that have to be clear even through unreliable channels. Languages that have numbers which might be misunderstood specifically use a different number set (one example is the military in China).

Building your own solution when you have a GLOBALLY ACCEPTED standard that took YEARS to be agreed upon is criminal in my opinion, rescue missions on the Alps where different cultures meet being a great example why you should stick to numbers.

[avh02]

have you ever tried providing a phone number/account number/id number over the phone? how easily/correctly was it transferred?

Now add in hypothermia, noise, weather, or bodily harm to that equation.

The only improvement would be if the app could provide the NATO phonetic alphabet version of your coordinates to you - but you're not going to remember those without looking at your screen while talking - which is multitasking in a situation that you probably aren't going to do it well in.

Finally, the verbal transfer time is about 1/3.

I don't like this thing for the reasons provided (proprietary and clearly has issues), but would rather see this in use than trying to provide ten numbers while bleeding out.

[tomcooks]

Have you tried having an injured foreigner spell words, maybe foreign, in the exact same situation? Yeah

[avh02]

I can ask the same about knowing and pronouncing numbers.

regardless, this is an article about a UK company's product being used by UK emergency services. An injured foreigner who can't speak English is going to have trouble with numbers too (granted, you may learn numbers first). You don't just make a call to emergency services and start spewing out numbers with no other vocabulary.

I can see your point on an international scale, and agree with you that this product is not globally scalable. Language barriers are language barriers until we all have the fictional babel fish.

edit: besides, you can always provide phonetic 'translations' if you want in to a foreigner's language/script if you must - not my preferred solution either though.

[PinguTS]

In military your are speaking about trained people to use proper pronunciation to eliminate disambiguation.

In rescue we are talking about untrained people how give an initial communication by word of mouth. This data is then translated to coordinates and then communication by then trained people in the chain of rescue.

So the problem is this initial communication by untrained people.