If you’re unfortunate enough to be involved in a accident while cycling and it’s bad enough that you have to be attended by Police or medical services, who are they gonna call?
Kings Moss Cycle Club mention a good idea on their blog, straight from a paramedic who attends road accidents on a daily basis: add your emergency contact person(s) to your mobile phone contact list under a standard moniker, so the emergency services know immediately “who they gonna call”.
The idea was originally conceived by Bob Brotchie, a paramedic with the East Anglian Ambulance Service and a scheme was launched in May 2005. It caught on in the UK and has now spread Europe and Australia, and has started to grow into North America.
Interviewed on July 12, 2005 on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Brotchie said:
I was reflecting on some difficult calls I’ve attended, where people were unable to speak to me through injury or illness and we were unable to find out who they were. I discovered that many people, obviously, carry mobile phones and we were using them to discover who they were. It occurred to me that if we had a uniform approach to searching inside a mobile phone for an emergency contact then that would make it easier for everyone.
I always carry my Everyday Cycling membership card with me when I’m out on the bike, so I have my emergency contact details available in any case. However the ICE scheme, as its inventor states, is a uniform approach for finding an emergency contact and is likely the first method any medics will use. Furthermore, I carry my mobile phone almost all the time, not just when I’m cycling, so by putting emergency numbers into my phone too I have an ICE arrangement for all occasions.
Although I hope I’ll never need them, I’ve added my ICE numbers to my mobile now.
Have you?
There’d not be much point in my having an ICE contact – the emergency services wouldn’t have the PIN to unlock either of my mobiles …
Ah of course. My PIN is only required if the phone is switched off or the SIM changed, so I didn’t consider that.
Are you more likely to be involved in a bad accident or lose your phone? If you’re in trouble, wouldn’t you like the emergency services to be able to search your contacts? Is it a big problem if you lose your phone and it’s not PIN protected? It’s a trade-off between security and safety that you’ll have to decide for yourself.
Perhaps it would be a better idea to just write/stick your ICE contact numbers on the back of your phone? Now there’s a product idea!
One of our guys was knocked off his bike in January when some eejit threw a full beer bottle at the bunch from an on-coming car. He was knocked off bike on to the ground. Okay, the guys were their to support him and get him to hospital BUT WHAT IF HE HAD BEEN ON HIS OWN AND KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS? I think the ICE no. on his phone would have been a great help. One of our support members is a paramedic and he says he has used ICE half a dozen times in last six months. Yeah, the PIN argument is fair but it is still a great option…
Throwing a bottle from a car? Wow, that’s so hilarious I can hardly contain myself.
I do a fair bit of riding on my own so it’s good to have my ICE numbers set up … just in case.
I don’t have an option on the PIN. It’s a GPO from my corporate exchange server, and as that’s where my calendar is mastered and sync’d to all PDAs I have to have the PIN or no calendar :-(
In a previous life I just had a regular keylock, like the rest of the world. Mind you, if someone got hold of my mobile I’d not be so worried about them making calls as writing stuff on my FB page ;-)