Your IPhone May Call the Police for Skiing
Your iPhone and Apple Watch want to keep you safe, but sometimes they overdo it. To save your life in the event of a car accident, they will contact you on your behalf to the emergency services and let them know what is going on. Only occasionally do they mistake harmless actions for horrific accidents. One minute you are enjoying skiing off the slope; the next time you explain to the police that no, you’re not really in danger.
Blame it on Crash Detection, a new addition to Apple’s latest devices including the iPhone 14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro, and 14 Pro Max, as well as the Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch Ultra, and the latest Apple Watch SE. Using the updated technology of these devices, Crash Detection analyzes your surroundings to determine if you have been in a serious accident. According to Apple , the devices track “frontal, side and rear collisions, and rollovers” involving “sedans, minivans, SUVs, pickup trucks and other passenger vehicles.”
However, this feature seems to be too sensitive. As reported by KSL , Summit County, Utah dispatchers are experiencing a spike in emergency calls due to Apple’s collision detection, but not because Utah drivers are more likely to crash into each other. As it turns out, the feature is disabled while some users are skiing. It’s unclear if collision detection is triggered by the speed at which skiers are moving or when skiers fall while moving fast, but controllers receive three to five such warnings a day, according to Summit County Control Center Supervisor Susie Butterfield. day, and none of the real failures.
Apple designed Crash Detection with a short grace period to prevent the device from contacting emergency services. When your iPhone or Apple Watch activates crash detection, you have 20 seconds to let it know that you haven’t been in an accident. Of course, when you’re actively skiing, you’ll almost certainly miss these warnings, setting yourself up for emergency calls.
Not only the police are notified. If you set up emergency contacts, your iPhone or Apple Watch will tell those contacts that you’re in a serious accident and send them your current location so they can help you. They might be curious why your serious car accident happened in the middle of a ski resort, but hey, stranger things have happened as well.
This isn’t the first time Crash Detection has been scammed. Apple had to fix an issue that caused iPhones to contact emergency services while their users were on a rollercoaster ride . This problem, and also these ski anecdotes, imply that collision detection can be fooled by specific high-speed actions. Can riding in a particularly bumpy subway car trigger this feature? How about roller skating? Over time, we may see more such incidents.
The dispatcher interviewed in the article doesn’t want people to disable this feature altogether, as it could be life-saving in the event of a real emergency. One user’s Apple Watch Series 8 was delivered to an EMS accident in five minutes , while otherwise they would not have been able to contact 911 themselves.
How to prevent Crash Detection from calling 911 by mistake
However, you also don’t want your ski weekend to be ruined by constant calls to emergency services. If you know you’re going skiing, you can turn off the automatic call feature. On an iPhone, go to Settings > Emergency Call – SOS and turn off Call after a serious accident. To turn off this feature on your Apple Watch, open the Watch app on your iPhone, then select Emergency SOS and turn off Call after a serious accident. Just be sure to turn it back on before you hit the road.
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