How to describe your location to a recovery truck when you break down

The problem with "somewhere near Kilkenny"

County Kilkenny is a big place with a lot of roads that look the same. The Castlecomer road is twenty kilometres long. Townland names repeat, half the roads have no sign at all, and the hedges are high enough that you cannot see a landmark from the driver's seat. On the M9 the truck has to pick a direction before it leaves the yard, and if it picks wrong it is a long way to the next junction to turn around.

What the driver needs is three things: the road you are on, the direction you were travelling, and one fixed point. Everything below is just a different way of giving that fixed point.

On the M9: junction number and direction

If you are on the motorway, the first thing to say is the direction and the last junction you passed. Something like: I am on the M9 southbound, about three kilometres after Junction 7 at Paulstown. Northbound, the last junction before the Carlow junctions is the one to name. Junction 8 (Kilkenny North) is where the N10 leaves for the city, and Junction 7 at Paulstown is the one with the Applegreen service area, the only motorway services on the Kilkenny stretch, so if the car is still moving and you are close to either, that is a far safer place to stop than the hard shoulder.

Direction matters more than most people think. A recovery truck cannot cross the central reservation, so a car on the northbound side described as near Paulstown might be a fifteen minute detour away if the driver guesses southbound.

Motorway marker posts: the blue signs and the hard shoulder markings

Irish motorways have small blue location signs on the verge roughly every 500 metres. Each one has three lines: the route, such as M9, a single letter for the direction of travel, N or S on the M9, and a number which is the distance in kilometres from the start of the route. Read all three lines off the nearest one to the driver exactly as they appear. That number pins you to within half a kilometre and tells the driver which carriageway you are on.

There are also markings painted on the hard shoulder about every 100 metres with the same route, direction and distance, plus an arrow pointing to the nearest emergency roadside telephone. The emergency phones sit about 1.6 kilometres apart and connect to the Motorway Traffic Control Centre, which sees your location automatically when you lift the handset. The control centre can also be reached on 0818 715 100. Use the phone on your own side of the carriageway, and never cross the motorway to reach one.

Only read a sign you can see from where you are standing safely behind the barrier. If the nearest one is up the road, give the junction and direction instead and let the driver find you.

Eircode: the nearest house

Off the motorway, the Eircode is the best single piece of information you can give on a country road. Every address in Ireland has one, it is seven characters long, and it takes the truck to the right gate rather than the right townland. Our own is R95 HN76, for the garage at Threecastles. Many rural houses have the Eircode on the gatepost or the post box. If not, knock and ask. People are happy to help a stranded driver.

If you cannot get to a house, the Eircode Finder website or app will show you the Eircode of any building you tap on the map, so you can find the one for the house you can see across the field. Do not give your own home Eircode by mistake, which happens more than you would think when someone is flustered.

Your phone: WhatsApp live location, Google Maps and what3words

If you have any data signal at all, a shared location beats any description. In WhatsApp, open the chat, tap the attachment icon, choose Location and then Share live location, and pick an hour. The driver then sees you move on the map if you have to shift the car, and it keeps working after you hang up. A Google Maps pin is just as good: press and hold on your position, then tap Share. Apple Maps does the same.

The what3words app divides the world into three metre squares and gives each one three words. It is free, it works everywhere in Ireland, and plenty of recovery drivers use it. Give the three words along with the road name, because not every call handler has the app open and the road name is the check that the words were heard correctly.

Text messages often get through where calls and data will not, so if the call keeps dropping, send the road, the direction and the Eircode by text. Keep the phone battery for the next call, and switch off anything streaming.

Landmarks and country road tips

When the phone is no help, describe the road the way a local would. Start with the last village or town you drove through and the direction you were heading, then the road number from the last sign you remember, such as the R700 or the R448, then anything you passed since: a church, a pub, a school, a GAA pitch, a named bridge, a creamery, a big gateway with pillars. Say whether you are on a hill or a bend, and which side of the road the car is on.

Then give the driver something to look for: the make and colour of the car, the hazard lights on, and you standing in a high visibility vest where you can be seen. Stay with the car. The truck comes to the car, and a driver who has walked off to find a signpost is the one thing we cannot find.

What not to do

Kilkenny Recovery Truck is on 087 288 2280 around the clock. Give the road, the direction and one fixed point, and we will tell you on the phone roughly how long we will be and what it will cost before the truck moves.

• Do not walk along the hard shoulder of the motorway looking for a sign. Stay behind the barrier and give the junction and direction instead
• Do not cross the motorway to reach an emergency phone on the other side
• Do not send a screenshot of a map with no pin on it. It shows the driver the county, not the car
• Do not move the car after sending a location without ringing to say so
• Do not switch the phone off to save battery. Dim the screen and close the apps instead
• Do not guess a townland. A wrong townland costs more time than no townland at all