To be honest, I’m still wondering why there is both the police and carabinieri in Italy.
While this was the case in many countries, the pulses weren’t the same all over the world. There were phones with the 0 in front of the 1, and there were also phones with the entire order reversed. I guess, a country which has 000 for emergency would define a 0 as one pulse.
Good question, and I never found the answer to it either. 
Also historical and pulse related: In Germany, our railroad has its own phone network, and they used the 1 for operator, in contrast to 0 in most other networks. The reasoning is simple: In case the dial breaks, you just had to tap the hook once to dial a 1 without requiring the precise timing skills you would need to dial any other number via hook dialing.
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Because of the logic. “1” means “there’s something else next”. So, the first non-1 number means “Ok, finished.”
This is my self-explanation.
Well, they have different purposes.
Police patrols the territory for traffic, give fines, checks at the airport, follows VIPs along their routes, and so on.
Carabinieri do the rest: go when murders happen, car crashes, robbery, and when there are the dirtiest things.
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It doesn’t work that way, though. From an electromechanical point of view, which the majority of exchanges were when emergency numbers were introduced:
Telephone numbers are arranged in a tree with branches of variable length. You are literally at a different node every time you dialed a digit, and each one has its own individual connections. After each digit you dial, you’re either at a branch and the exchange expects more digits, or you are at a leaf when the number is completed. Or you’ll be connected to an announcement instantly, if you dial a digit you’re not supposed to at the current node. (Somewhat simplified that is)
It would be very simple to wire 111 along side 112. Btw. 911 also ends with a 1 after a 1.
While it makes sense that there are different departments, they don’t have individual emergency numbers in other countries. Usually a police office has its own department for emergency calls and they’ll dispatch the officers from the departments they need.
Wow, I started the OT. But YOU are dragging me into it!! 
Well, the matter is slightly different.
I was looking for the “hide details” option to conceal the OT, but I can’t find it. What happened, Discourse?
No matter, I’ll just blur it:
Carabinieri was a sort of military police once (they were a corp of the Italian Army: do you remember the plates of the vehicles? Now they’re tagged “CC” for Carabinieri, but once they were tagged “EI” for Esercito Italiano). You could find Police Stations in big towns, while Carabinieri had barracks in rural villages.
The distinction between “police” and a “military police” with such duties (usually called “Gendarmerie”) comes directly from the Napoleonic law enforcement framework. In fact another notable nation which has a gendarmerie is France.
Today this distinction has faded. Polizia and Carabinieri have widely overlapping duties.
The distinction is kept only for traditional and historical reasons, but makes no sense. Doubling services is wasting resources.
Did I say “doubling”?
According to Wikipedia, Italy has 4, I say F-O-U-R National Police Corps:
Polizia di Stato
Carabinieri
Polizia Penitenziaria
Guardia di Finanza.
That doesn’t count the Local Police Corps, which would make the list even longer.
What’s the point in that? Why do we need a “Financial Police” as a separate corp? Why their duties cannot be in charge of a specific department of the State Police? And, by the way, although the “core business” of GdF is fiscal investigation, among the official duties of Guardia di Finanza there’s even traffic control… 
When we had those awkward multiple emergency numbers, GdF even had an emergency number!
117. Why should I need such a number?
“1-1-7, what is your emergency?”
“Please, hurry! Come! I need help! I paid my espresso and the bartender didn’t give me a valid receipt!” 
Luckily at least one of the National Corps was disbanded. Yes, they were 5 (F-I-V-E) until 2016, when they decided the “Forestal Police Corps” had to be dismantled.
Well, the nice thing is they recycled the cars, so you can sometimes stumble in some funny green Carabinieri cars…
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“How many do you know?” (Cit.)
Click on the gear, and the “hide details” option will be displayed.
Sometimes it feels like here a lot of laws, police and state departments have been established to fight crime, corruption and lawlessness, but the most important thing would be succeeding in changing the mindset of the most of people, their attitude towards the commons, and the perception of the state as a contribution of everyone.
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It’s harder to accidentally dial the 110: You have to move the whole wheel for the zero, but the whole number is still fast to dial.
I’ve always done so. But yesterday it didn’t work.
Yeah. If there’s a speed limit of 50kph and everybody there speed at 70, in normal countries they put a speed camera. In Italy they don’t. They lower the limit to 40 kph, as if this would solve the problem.
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I stumbled in one of those strange green cars once, so Wikipedia did the rest.