They were strikingly yellow, they have a shape that we have never seen before and they were there to help you in case of breakdown or emergency: the ANWB emergency telephones. Many European countries still have them, the emergency telephones, but we officially said goodbye to them in 2017. After all, everyone uses their phone. However, today we step into the time machine and go to the year 1960.
Trial piles
It has been that long since ANWB came up with those emergency telephones. In 1960, 12 test piles were installed. Back then they were still called telephone columns and it was inspired by a German design. Yet it was not the case that the ANWB only thought about it in the 1960s: there were already plans in the 1930s. Ultimately, however, this only came true in the 1960s with those 12 poles that processed no fewer than 16,000 reports in one year. In 1965, 18 poles were added and they were then called kletskop.
A Philips rabbit
Ultimately, the project was transferred from the ANWB to the national government and Philips was called in to create a new design: that would ultimately become the well-known design with the ‘ears’, of which an upgrade was made in 1994 and was nicknamed the rabbit. Ultimately, at their peak, there were approximately 3,500 emergency telephones in the Netherlands, located every two kilometers. That was around the year 1999, when 100,000 reports were still received on the poles every year. However, this quickly deteriorated with the arrival of the mobile phone.
Emergency center
Not everyone knows who exactly you got on the line when you pressed the button on the emergency telephone, but this was the ANWB control room. So no 112, nor Rijkswaterstaat, but simply the ANWB, which could arrive with an ANWB car to provide assistance by car, or possibly call in the emergency services if there was a real emergency. Ultimately, it cost 1 million euros per year to maintain the network and the Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment decided in 2014 to stop using those emergency telephones. In 2017, the 3,300 emergency telephones still present were disabled and removed.
RIP Talking posts
There is a disadvantage that the mobile phone has compared to the emergency telephone: people sometimes panic and do not know where they are and cannot communicate this properly. On the other hand, they do not have to walk all the way to an emergency telephone, so that saves time. If you are in need, check carefully which hectometer marker you are standing at and let us know. And it is also useful to put the correct telephone number in your phone: the ANWB Emergency Center on 088 269 28 88. You can also use the ANWB Onderweg app, because it has a button to immediately call the ANWB. If you really can’t live without the emergency telephone, you can still buy them: on Marktplaats there is one for 125 euros and one for 300 euros.
