The iPhone 14 was advertised as having a feature called “Crash Detection,” which would call the police if the phone sensed that the user had been in a severe car accident. But since the phones came out, we’ve heard about hotspots that aren’t there.
Every wrong call puts too much stress on the emergency services in the area. In this latest case, the Kita-Alps, Nagano, Japan fire department said it got 134 false calls between December 16 and January 23. “Most” of these calls came from iPhone 14 Crash Detection systems set off by skiers going down the slopes.
During that month, the Japanese emergency services unit got 919 calls, so the 100 false calls caused by the iPhone Crash Detection feature were more than a tenth of their work.
There have also been reports of Crash Detection false positives during winter sports all over the United States. Roller coaster rides have also been a common place for false positives. This is likely because these activities’ high speeds and impacts make it easy for the algorithms to mistake them for driving and car crashes.
When the iPhone thinks a crash has happened, it starts a countdown (with a loud warning siren) on the user’s device before making an automatic call to emergency services. The user can stop the process at any time. But if the user is doing something busy, like riding a roller coaster or skiing, they might not hear the siren and won’t know what’s happening, so keep the call from going through.
People say that Apple is working with local emergency services, which get a lot of false Crash Detection calls, to try to solve the problem.
At the end of December, the release notes for iOS 16.1.2 said that the company had “optimized crash detection on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models.”
Of course, for every story about how false positives caused problems, there are also many stories about how Crash Detection worked as it was supposed to and saved lives.
ABC News reported that the automated Crash Detection feature on the iPhone lets emergency services know about a car accident in Australia. This meant that the police could arrive just eight minutes after the accident.
This feature is available on the iPhone 14, the iPhone 14 Pro, the Apple Watch Series 8, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation), and the Apple Watch Ultra. Most people should leave this feature turned on, but if you want to turn it off, go to Settings > Emergency SOS > Call After Serious Crash and turn off the toggle.
