What Do You Bet He "Can’t Afford" GPS Tracking For Company Vehicles

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Years ago when I was tasked the very first time to work on a GPS-driven AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) system the general who gave me the tasking did so with a heavy heart. At one of the Air Force bases he was responsible for an child in a base family housing unit had a critical medical emergency. The child’s frantic mother called 911 and the base hospital dispatched and ambulance almost immediately. Unfortunately it was snowing and blowing (think North Dakota in January) and the ambulance driver was unfamiliar with the housing area and took a wrong turn in the blinding snow storm.

After 15 frantic minutes of calls back and forth on his voice radio to the dispatcher, a police car rushing to locate him and having a wreck in the process, the driver finally found the home of the distressed child. But sadly, the child had already died. As the commander the general had the heavy task of traveling through the blizzard to the remote missile silo where the child’s father was on duty and trying, unsuccessfully, why it took so long to get aid to the man’s stricken child.

The general’s words to me and my boss as he issued our tasking? “Find me a system that works and we’ll find the money for it! I don’t ever want to have to perform that task again, for anyone.”

That was in 1999. I had just returned from an extended assignment in Japan. Ambulances, police cars even gold carts were all being GPS tracking equipped there … more than 8 years ago.

Now, every tech blog and dozens of newspaper articles a month report on the “hot thing” for golfers. Toy-like hand-held GPS caddys.

Are your city’s EMS vehicles GPS tracked? Your child’s school bus? Don’t even know, do you? perhaps you can discuss it with the mayor on the golf course Saturday. He’ll probably look at his snazzy new GPS golf toy while he explains to you why the city can’t afford the “luxury” of systems that save lives. God Bless America, we always have our priorities straight.