A SENIOR North Yorkshire Police officer has urged mobile phone users to be careful - as a vital telephone lifeline is being unintentionally abused.

It has been revealed that emergency operators across the country are dealing with thousands of silent mobile phone calls every day, as owners accidentally dial 999.

In rural areas such as North Yorkshire, where mobile phone use is higher, it is suspected that even more unnecessary calls are being made, potentially wasting limited emergency service resources.

The problem is made worse by modern phones which dial 999 - or the European emergency code 112 - despite having a locked keypad.

North Yorkshire Police Inspector John Fowler said the number of silent calls from mobile phones is increasing dramatically in the county.

He said: "They are not nuisance calls because they are not being made intentionally, but they are causing us some concern.

"It's quite an easy thing to do. If you are carrying a mobile phone in your pocket, make sure there is some kind of physical guard to stop it dialling 999, or consider turning it off."

The plea comes after the Evening Press reported how police emergency operators were struggling to answer emergency calls quickly.

Victims of crime are being left in limbo as 999 calls are put into a queuing system at peak times of the day.

Inspector Fowler said that a computerised service had been introduced to save police time and filter out non-urgent calls.

The system, based at New Scotland Yard in London, receives all silent emergency calls routed to it by BT controllers from areas including North Yorkshire.

Once connected, an automated computer asks the caller to press the five button twice on their keypad if there is a genuine emergency.

When this happens, the caller is redirected on a top-priority line to an operator.

The London centre is now receiving almost 2,500 silent calls a day - 19 per cent of all emergency contacts.

Nationally, an average of 29 calls out of 16,000 made per day are confirmed by someone pressing the five button.

Updated: 10:04 Saturday, August 03, 2002