How to Prevent Your Phone From Calling Emergency Services in an Accident
In an emergency, you need fast, reliable access to help. What you don’t want is for this access to be so fast and so reliable, you end up calling 911 for a complete accident. Unfortunately, this is the state of emergency services on iPhone and Android, and if you’re reading this, you may well know how easy it is to waste emergency time by dialing an emergency number incorrectly. Let’s fix this.
The SOS emergency service is responsible for many of the accidental emergency calls.
On both iPhone and Android, a feature called Emergency SOS is the main cause of these false emergency calls. At first glance, this is a great feature; The SOS emergency dials 911 for you with a simple shortcut. When time is of the essence, it is clear that it is important to get these services as quickly as possible, and Emergency SOS helps.
Of course, when something is so easy to use in an emergency, it is just as easy to use in any other context.
How to use Emergency SOS on iPhone and Android
Whether you have a Pixel 6 or iPhone 13, Emergency SOS works the same on both platforms: When this feature is enabled, you quickly press the power button five times. This action triggers a short countdown followed by a (frankly frightening) alarm; after this countdown, your phone will automatically call 911. Depending on your device, the Emergency SOS can do other things, such as automatically notifying your emergency contacts that you have a problem, and starting video recording.
There are many problems with this setup. First, the power button is used for other shortcuts, not just emergency help. For example, on an iPhone, you double-click the side button to confirm Apple Pay; if something goes wrong and you try too eagerly to confirm, you will call an Emergency SOS. Likewise, if you mistake the power button for the volume button, it means that if you try to increase or decrease the volume five steps at a time, you will dial 911 immediately.
I got this feature disabled when my iPhone was in the cup holder of my car. The bumps along Park Avenue in Manhattan caused the side button to be pressed at least five times in a row, and my heart almost stopped when I heard the SOS alarm.
However, Emergency SOS needs to be configured before it becomes active. If you’ve never set up Emergency SOS, this issue won’t apply to you, but for those of us who have used this feature, even if we don’t remember it, you can stop random calls in the future if you want.
Fortunately, you don’t really need to turn off Emergency SOS completely so that you don’t accidentally call emergency services. Instead, you can simply disable the feature that automatically makes emergency calls.
How to prevent your phone from automatically calling emergency services
On Android and iOS, go to Emergency SOS in the Settings app. To simply turn off the emergency 911 emergency call feature, turn off Dial Call on iOS and Emergency Calls on Android. If this feature is disabled, Emergency SOS will ask if you want to disable the shortcut completely, disable “Call with side button” on iOS and “Use Emergency SOS” on Android.
Emergency SOS also exists not only as a quick shortcut; you can access it more consciously on both platforms. On iPhone, hold down the Volume Up and Side buttons at the same time until the Emergency SOS slider appears. On Android, keep the power button pressed until the “Emergency” option appears on the screen. Both platforms force you to select the Emergency SOS option after launching the shortcut in a way that makes accidental execution much more difficult.