YORK – ABC 27 is reporting…They are the very first responders when something goes wrong.
Before a fire truck, ambulance, or police car can show up a dispatcher has to figure out who to send and where to send them.
How they do that just changed in one Midstate County.
That county is York County and this story is actually about who is doing the talking.
“Traffic accidents, fires, police incidents,” said abc27’s George Richards.
Police scanner traffic.
Richards said, “Different voices, different counties. you get to identify them. After a while, you know who’s what county.”
And then suddenly, something different.
Richards states, “It just happened about a couple weeks ago. and I thought, oh, okay,” said Richards. “Clear, very distinctive. and when you hear it, I know immediately. I know, okay, this is York County.”
The dispatchers are still there, talking to folks who call and entering all the information, but now the automated voice reads the information over the radio.
The idea, well two things, it takes about a minute for a dispatcher to send out a series of tones and then make the announcement.
Scott Keener, York County 911 said, “Dispatchers multitask just about everything they’re doing. this is just one little piece of workload taken off their plate so that they can focus on all the other dynamics of their job.”
The things a computer can’t do, like trying to keep a scared 911 caller calm. The other thing about human announcements is that they’re human.
Keener also said, “Usually when you get busy, you might get more excited. you’re talking louder. the middle of the night, you might be tired. you might be whispering. you know, there’s so many different human variables. this is consistency.”
Richards said, “You don’t get any excitement. you get information. and that’s what we need first and foremost.”
The robot’s voice won’t be any different for a three-alarm fire than it will be if someone burned some food in their kitchen.
George and the 911 workers say that you have to listen to the words not how urgently they’re said, but on balance they say the consistency and clarity are a good thing.
The dispatchers can still make a manual announcement over the radio if they feel they need to do that.
