Michigan Has America’s 6th Highest 911 Call Rate

When things go wrong, you're in an accident, something catches on fire, or someone gets seriously injured, one of the first things that someone says is "Someone call 911". Which is the right call to make but sometimes I feel as if things can be handled without calling the authorities, but that is a personal preference in which everybody feels differently about. Some say it's better to be safe than sorry while others try to handle things themselves, but neither stance is more right than the other.

Regardless of the fact that neither side is right, both sides factor into the overall number of 911 calls an area will receive which can change the perception of the area. Meaning that an area could be seen as safe or not safe, or more dangerous than it once was due to the number of times 911 is called and the police or other authorities are in the area. Michigan doesn't seem like an unsafe state compared to some of the others in the country, but these 911 call rates might change your mind on that.

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The research conducted by experts at personal injury attorneys injuredinflorida.com analyzed the National 911 Program data on the amount of 911 calls in each US state from 2019 to 2021 and calculated the average rate per 1,000 population annually. There are many different factors that affect this study, but Michigan seems to be the only Midwest state ranked this high, are we more dangerous, more cautious, or just scared?

Michigan comes in ranked in the top 10 for states that call 911 operators the most. Michigan is officially ranked 6th on this list which takes data from 2019-2021, evaluating the number of 911 calls taken during that two-year span. During the study they found that Michigan is calling 911 operators more often than 44 other states in the country but less times than 5 other states.

Numbers Never Lie

The 5 states above Michigan are New Mexico, Georgia, Colorado, Hawaii, and New Jersey in this order but Michigan followed closely behind in sixth place with an average of 906 emergency calls per 1,000 residents. The averages for the other 5 states were 1,169, 1,146, 1,079, 1,039, 977 respectively. All of these numbers add up to millions of 911 calls per year, so how many does Michigan have alone? 

Michigan has a total of 27,240,284 calls to 911 operators in the years of 2019-2021 which boils down to 9,080,094.6 calls per year. Michigan isn't underpopulated but we aren't one of the heavily populated states either, as we have 10,034,113 residents placing us somewhere in the middle. These numbers mean that almost every resident in the state is calling 911 at least once in the year. That's A LOT! 

Do you think Michigan might be calling the police too much? Do you think there is a such thing as calling 911 too much? Do you think some people aren't calling 911 enough? How many of these 911 calls are false calls? I have so many questions about this, but they all come back to the idea that we call 911 way too much!

Hopefully we aren't calling for any of the reasons listed below as they are the 12 dumbest reasons people call 911.