Americans Prefer Phone Call for Emergency Alerting

Despite all the Internet capabilities of mobile devices, a recent survey found that Americans are still most confident receiving emergency alerts via an old-fashioned phone call or television. Even among the tech-savvy 18 to 29 year-old demographic, television ranks highest for receiving an emergency alert, followed by a text message. The survey commissioned by safety and security company Federal Signal Corp. also determined that Americans are most concerned about natural disasters, closely followed by a terrorist attack and a health pandemic. About 47 percent of respondents say they don’t have an emergency plan, but 61 percent were confident in their knowledge about proper safety procedures. The survey of 2,020 adults was performed during November by Zogby International, and broke down results by age and region of the U.S. Respondents rated mobile communications as the most important tool for public safety, followed by full-equipped vehicle and traffic-clearing technology. View the result graphs and other information from the survey after the break.

Download (pdf) the written summary of the survey here, and a slide show of the full results here. Federal Signal has also posted a video explaining the survey and its results.