Chance Miller
Over the last several years, Apple has added new features to the iPhone and
Apple Watch, such as fall detection and crash detection. When activated, these
features are designed to automatically call emergency services if triggered.
While these features have saved countless lives since their respective
releases, there are also occasional false positives. These false positives are
apparently such a nuisance to some law enforcement agencies that those agencies
are encouraging residents to disable the features altogether.
Fall detection launched with the Apple Watch Series 4. If it detects a hard
fall, it taps you on the wrist, sounds an alarm, and displays an alert. If
youâre able to respond to the alert, you can say youâre okay or request
emergency services. If you fail to respond to the alert, your Apple Watch will
call emergency services itself.
Crash detection debuted last year with the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Series 8.
It works much like fall detection; if your iPhone or Apple Watch detects that
you may have been in a car crash, youâll receive a notification, and you can
confirm youâre okay or ask for emergency services.
The iPhone and Apple Watch also both offer the basic Emergency SOS feature,
which allows you to call emergency services using a certain button combination:
⢠iPhone 8 or later: Press and hold the side button and one of the volume
buttons until the Emergency SOS slider appears.
⦠Drag the Emergency Call slider to call emergency services. If you continue
to hold down the side button and volume button, instead of dragging the slider,
a countdown begins, and an alert sounds. If you hold down the buttons until the
countdown ends, your iPhone automatically calls emergency services.
⢠Apple Watch: Press and hold your watchâs side button (the button below
the Digital Crown) until the Emergency Call slider appears.
⦠Drag the Emergency Call slider to start the call immediately. Or you can
keep holding the side button; after a countdown, your watch calls emergency
services automatically.
What first responders say
The combination of these features is leading to an influx of false calls to
emergency services across the country. A report from MPR News this week focuses
on how this problem is impacting first responders in Minnesota.
The report, like others weâve seen, recounts that the iPhone 14 and Apple
Watchâs crash detection feature is being falsely triggered by people
partaking in snow sports like skiing and snowboarding.
When these accidental calls are made, the dispatchers are required to send
first responders to the location unless the person who made the call can
confirm it was a mistake. In some instances, this involves sending a rescue
squad, law enforcement, EMS personnel, and more.
Cook County Sheriff Pat Eliasen told MPR News that his dispatch center received
around 700 false 911 calls in 2022. The agency reportedly saw âa spike in
calls over the holidays, some of which were accidentally triggered by crash
detection.â
âIt was taking up a lot of time in our dispatch center, and if they canât
verify that itâs false, then they have to send deputies out, and itâs a lot
of stress on our office, being that weâre a small office in the first place,
to go and track some of these calls down,â Eliasen said.
The problem has apparently put such a strain on some departments that first
responders are telling residents to âturn offâ some of these features:
â Both Cook and Stearns County have encouraged residents in the past couple
of weeks to check the settings on their devices, and turn off the automatic
emergency all features when taking part in activities such as snowmobiling or
skiing, or when it isnât neededâ.
An interesting tidbit from todayâs report is also that itâs not just
Appleâs built-in features triggering these false positives. The third-party
app Life 360 also offers a crash detection feature, which also calls emergency
services if a crash is detected and the user doesnât respond.
9to5Macâs Take
Itâs clear that these features are putting a strain on first responders
around the United States, but the solution to the problem shouldnât be to
encourage citizens to disable the features altogether.
In particular, the advice to disable the features âwhen taking part in
activities such as snowmobiling or skiingâ is particularly bad. These types
of activities may increase the odds of a false positive, but this is also when
youâre most likely to actually need the features to work.
With that said, Iâm not entirely sure what the solution is. Some law
enforcement agencies cited in todayâs MPR News report say that this is merely
an opportunity to educate people on the full breadth of these features.
Dana Wahlberg, director of the emergency communication networks division of the
Minnesota Department of Public Safety:
â This is a really good opportunity to provide education to people to help
them understand that [theyâve] purchased a product that has a lot of
technology available with it. And with that comes a responsibility to really
embrace that technology.
So stay on the line and just let the dispatcher know that you made an error.
Thereâs no harm, no foul in that. Instead, if theyâre spending time trying
to track you down or call you back, that is a drain on resourcesâ.
This is something Apple can help with, too. If the company can better educate
users about the Emergency SOS features of their iPhone and Apple Watch, it can
show people what to do in the case of a false positive. The recent release of
iOS 16.2 actually added a new feature that allows users to report to Apple when
the Emergency SOS functionality is unintentionally triggered.
Itâs clear that false positives are putting a drain on first responders, but
how do you solve this without telling people to disable the features?
9to5Mac.
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