[cbhl]

If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are calls (or otherwise an urgent call might go unanswered).

My understanding is the key rules are:

1) wait for an operator and do not hang up (because if you hang up they assume something bad happened and will send police/fire/etc to you), and,

2) tell them that it is a test call so that they can assess whether they can spend time on you or should hang up to answer a more urgent call.

I'm sure kids call 911 enough as a prank that your test call won't have a meaningful impact on call volume.

[click170]

In my area there were actually advertisements on the radio asking people to use the lock function on their cellphone to prevent pocket-calls to 911 a few years back. They claimed it had become a problem.

It leads me to wonder if your comment about capacity (which I assumed was the case as well) does not apply evenly everywhere.

[cbhl]

Well, if you don't tell them it's a test call and you pocket dial, I would hope that the 911 call center would assume that you're being held hostage and send police/fire/etc. to you.

So, IMO, that the system isn't meant to handle this type of false alarm isn't reflective of call center capacity but rather fire/police/ambulance capacity (and also annoying everyone involved).