Today I learned there are all kinds of personal safety apps and services.

If you own a mobile device, you’re never truly alone. If you have an ongoing concern for your personal safety, there are personal safety services that offer live monitoring, like the Lively Wearable ($49 on greatcall.com) with Greatcall's 5Star Urgent Response service that connects you to a 24/7 dispatch service starting at $15 per month. But if you just want a way to warn your contacts if you fail to check-in or otherwise need to send out an SOS, there's no need to pay. Here are 3 great free options for providing a little bit of extra piece of mind.

NOTE: If you believe yourself to be in a real emergency, your first line of defense should always be to contact emergency services at 911. No app is 100% foolproof, and cannot substitute for professional first responders.

Click the article for reviews of bSafe, Kitestring, Bugle, and SafeTrek.

Some stats:

1. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 73% of 911 calls come in from cell phones.

2. Additionally, some 911 call centers across the country are using old, sometimes outdated maps, according to an NBC News report. Without proper locating technology and information, dispatchers can't find as many as 60% of 911 wireless callers.

3. Of the 240 million 911 calls made annually (which is up 26% in the last decade), more than 10,000 resulted in fatalities from inaccurate location information. The problem stretches from coast to coast: In California, 1 in 14 cell phone-based calls to 911 is put on hold, and in Washington, D.C., 90% of wireless calls don't make it to dispatch with accurate location information.

Source: 

https://mic.com/articles/114046/you-probably-didn-t-know-calling-911-is-a-problem-but-it-is-these-guys-are-fixing-it

John Oliver on the sad state of 911:

RapidSOS makes the Haven app to help share exact location information:

http://info.rapidsos.com/blog/john-oliver-last-week-tonight

180 million mobile 9-1-1 calls are made each year, most without precise location data. Haven by RapidSOS can help:

https://rapidsos.com

RapidSOS Haven is like Uber for 911:

https://diatribe.org/rapidsos-innovating-911

From that article:

Data shows Haven saves an average of 1-5 minutes in response time per emergency call/text placed. As MIT Professor Scott Stern’s research shows, minutes saved translates directly into lives and dollars: per minute saved in emergency response time, chances of survival increase by more than 2% and hospital bills fall by nearly 7%.