Be grateful you live in the US!

The mother of an OLX employee called 911 in Argentina to report a robbery in progress across her street. The police did not answer, but played a “helpful” message: “If you are in danger, try to avoid the danger”!

Non sequitur: It’s interesting how many countries are now using 911 as their emergency response number because their citizens got used to using that number after seeing it in use in so many American movies and TV shows.

  • According to Wikipedia, 911 is used for emergency calls in about 95% of the US and Canada. There is no global emergency phone number. Australia uses 000, the entire Europe uses 112 on all land lines and mobile networks, and so on. All GSM phones in the world use 112 as an emergency number, they are even programmed to accept dialling 112 without a SIM card in the phone or if the phone’s keypad is locked. And I bet that the billion something GSM and CDMA phones in the world exceed the North American population a couple of times.

    What a few countries may have done is to create a “redirect” service from 911 to their actual emergency number. It’s probably for the sake of travelling Americans who assume too much about the rest of the world. 😉