For safety’s sake, we need to rethink our address system

Back when I worked in the music events industry, a huge part of my time was spent trying to get bands and equipment to the right place, on time. It was far more difficult than I’d ever imagined, and it was painfully clear to me that street addressing is totally inadequate for directing people from place to place – unsurprising when it was designed well over a century ago to deliver post.

But the implications can be far more serious than lost bands and late gigs; when it’s emergency services trying to find someone, every second makes the difference between life and death.

You may think that there’s nothing wrong with your address, but have you ever thought about whether it’s unique or easy to confuse? If you live on a Church Road in London, there are 14 others in London alone. And then there are all the similar addresses – Church Groves, Church Walks, and Church Terraces.

Read more: UK services sector shrinks for first time in over two years

Postcodes add detail, but if you’re calling from anywhere other than your home or office, you’re unlikely to know the postcode. In an emergency, stress means that you’re more likely to confuse roads or struggle to describe landmarks.

Even if you do know the address, that doesn’t guarantee an ambulance will find you. Research shows that only 30 per cent of street addresses point to the front door. In most cases, when you type an address into an online map, the pin doesn’t drop at the entrance – it’s outside, on the road, or in the centre of the building. This is particularly problematic for flats and offices with several entrances.

Most of you will have been called by a friend or Deliveroo driver saying “I’m pretty sure I’m here, but…”. You’re not alone – 74 per cent of UK residents say that services and visitors struggle to find them. While cold takeaways and missed deliveries are frustrating, when it’s a paramedic calling and your pregnant wife is in difficulty, an

inaccurate address suddenly has very serious consequences.

And emergencies don’t just happen in buildings – they can happen in parks, car parks, festival fields, towpaths, beaches, farmland, woodland, and tennis courts too. Places that our current addressing system doesn’t cover. Operators get callers to describe what they see, but it’s time consuming, and often leads to resource-draining helicopter searches.

Our emergency services are under incredible pressure. Nine out of 10 UK police officers say that there aren’t enough officers to manage demand, and waits for 999 crews in rural areas average over 20 minutes in life-threatening emergencies. These issues can’t be fixed by addressing alone, but any time a response crew spends searching pushes services closer to the brink.

We often communicate where we are using smartphone pins, but these are locked to our devices – they can’t be spoken to a call operator or communicated by radio, and they only work if there’s a data connection.

GPS coordinates are accurate, but prone to error. Some try simplifying coordinates into shorter mixtures of numbers and letters. But these are hard to remember, and difficult to type correctly.

Read more: How do you market an idea like replacing an address with the word "lettuce"

My solution to direct musicians involved simplifying coordinates into human-friendly three word addresses, and this has been adopted by several UK emergency services. For example, telling 999 that you’ve fallen at “kite chats dine”, will direct responders to a precise three-metre-by-three-metre location in a field in York.

Results so far tell a compelling story. Humberside Police recently rescued a woman held hostage who didn’t know where she was using What3words, and Avon and Somerset police used a three word address to find a mother and child who’d been run off the road in a rural area.

A quarter of people say that they’re open to a new addressing system. As the UK becomes a leader in innovation, it’s time that we move away from antiquated systems and look to the future.