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Comment by ACS_Solver | Hacker News Reader

More accurately, 112 is the EU emergency number (and the GSM standard) but actual organization of emergency services is entirely national so who deals with your call and how will be local. The article also points out that handling of 911 is local in the US, even if apparently most 911 dispatchers are somehow subordinate to the police.

Also, like 112 forwards to 911 in the US, most cell networks in the EU will forward 911 to 112. American cultural dominance has made it so everyone knows 911 and even Europeans apparently end up dialing it.

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I had a weird thing happening with that. I just returned from dinner in Germany driving through a semi-industrial area in the netherlands when I spotted a fire in one of the buildings we drove past. I called 112 and was connected to the German dispatcher and they couldn't connect me to the Dutch fire department. So they sent the German firetruck across the border and meanwhile alerted their Dutch colleagues as well. Apparently my phone had not yet re-registered with the dutch network even though we were already well across the border.

That’s super cool of them. I guess fire is one of those things where jurisdiction doesn’t have to be exact. And with the lack of physical border there, they could easily just hop over and do their Dutch colleagues a favor.

I mean they were possibly going to help anyway or even physically closer. And I imagine that sitting around in the fire department does get boring, something to do occasionally is welcome :)

> I mean they were possibly going to help anyway or even physically closer.

There is a good chance of that.

The fire was in Eygelshoven, Nievelsteenstraat. I don't know how close the nearest fire stations are either side of the border.

Emergency services work cross border lots of times but I had never seen it in action. They were super fast too, far faster than I thought was even possible and their dutch colleagues weren't all that far behind. They managed to save the surrounding buildings but the building where the fire started was lost.

> and meanwhile alerted their Dutch colleagues as well

It's great that they were able to do this! I wonder what that looks like on their end. Maybe it's just a matter of having a direct telephone number for the closest Dutch dispatch center?

I wouldn't look as far as cultural dominance. If you're abroad and in an emergency, you're just going to dial the number you remember from your home country on autopilot, and there's no good reason not to support that if the number isn't already taken for something else.

Yes, sure. But I am talking about Europeans, not Americans, who know 911. I see kids here who are familiar with 911 just through American media, which is really the only source here for anyone to know the number.

> American cultural dominance has made it so everyone knows 911 and even Europeans apparently end up dialing it.

This is a ridiculous opinion.

It’s weird that that opinion occurred in a comment where they already knew about the reverse decision. It’s more of a case of pragmatism than cultural dominion.

I suppose they think that if America didn’t have so much cachet, that calls to 911 in Europe should route to a recording of someone chewing you out (in whatever the local language is) for being a cultural imperialist.

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