Why doesn't 911 accept texts? Certainly this would help thousands of people in emergency situations who for various reasons are not in the position to communicate their distress vocally.

I haven't worked in a 911 call-centre, but I have picked up non-emergency ambulance cases before as part of my job. Being able to hear the state the caller is in (sobbing? distraught?) is invaluable as the ambulances I handle have a 30-minute turnaround, and is run by private operators, whereas the national emergency ambulances have one of ten minutes or less. The few seconds that I talk could make a difference. That being said (sorry, kind of irrelevant), the point I'm trying to put across is that texting, while having advantages, have some problems like those already mentioned by others. I'm sure those countries implementing such a... service have ways to getting around stuff like spam texts, and some times a person may not provide important information (location, condition?). I do support such an implementation, for the very reason that I got trapped in a lift once, with not enough reception to make a call, but could send a text.