Centimetre, and after the next big earthquake are all numbers off, sometimes even by several meters. Now what you do? New addresses for all, or wrong numbers to new buildings?

> Now what you do?

When the ambulance arrives wave your hands and say "over here!". So they can do the "last several meters" of navigation by homing on your visual presence.

This was in the context of needing to give a location for an ambulance, not for addressing things.

It's an ephemeral location for an ephemeral need.

Not really a problem in the UK

In the best case your GPS is off by far more than the worst case GPS. There are GPS receivers that can get you to within 2cm, but they cost thousands of dollars and are not used in phones.

In the context of navigation that is good enough - if you are within 100 meters you can look to see your destination.

Or a plus code, which is a little less precise, open, and a little easier for humans to transmit than a latlng.

To save some maths during a crisis - 3 is ~100m, 4 is ~10m.

Lat/long coordinates and metres are actually linked quite closely: the metre was originally defined as "the arc from equator to North pole is defined as 10,000 km". That is, 90 degrees is 10,000 km.

And if the French had had their way, we’d use grads not degrees and latitude would instead be 100 grads per 10,000km, so each grad of latitude would be 100km.

That kind of sanity was, of course, unacceptable to the rest of the world.

The French were really into decimalization for a while. They tried decimal time (10 decimal hours per day, each 100 decimal minutes, each 100 decimal seconds), and a new calendar with equal 30-day months (the extra days at the end were national holidays, in September in the Gregorian calendar). Also 10-day 'décades' instead of weeks.