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I wonder how this is going to work as more and more people have devices with this feature. Say there are five people in one vehicle and they crash into another vehicle carrying four people, and they all have phones or watches with Crash Detection. Is that going to be nine calls to the dispatch center, plus more from witnesses?
 
Since the phone has your location (because it sends it), and Apple Maps mostly knows where roads are, shouldn't one of the factors taken into consideration be "was I travelling on or really close to a road in the few seconds before the crash"? That would cut down on the false alarms. Ok there are considerations like no cell service so the phone can't download a map in which case you might err on the side of caution and send an alert but mostly the phone should know if there's an actual road near you.
 
Info from the reports they take. So basically what activity was happening during the false positive. Number of occurrences, location (so they could potentially reproduce for testing), etc...

Maybe. Previous articles claimed that most of the calls have no response (the skier/biker/roller coaster rider/etc doesn't even know the phone that is zipped up in their coat/pants/bag/etc is calling anyone). And my guess is that if the skier/etc does answer, they will just say "oh sorry my iPhone auto-called you". I don't think they are going to tell a long story to the 911 operator about what turn they were doing or where they were carrying their phone etc.
 
I suspect many here will assume that because it's another day and another opportunity to smack Apple. People here live for that, and the perceived power it gives them, while feeling good in the process.
Normally I’d say that we won’t see these stories for the upcoming Android version, but that’s because it won’t work due to relying on the nearly defunct Iridium network (nearly no ground stations). But we’ll still hear how smart and great Qualcomm is.
 
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This is such a half baked 'feature' and is doing real harm by wasting dispatchers time.

it has also been confirmed to save lives

So much for Apples in depth testing they claimed to have done. Not good at all and quite literally could be costing people their lives.

they in depth tested it with vehicles, i imagine there's a bunch of engineers scratching their heads as to why skiing specifically is causing this. i also imagine they didnt test skiing or many other high velocity sports to see if it would cause a trigger. they just might now

and quite literally is saving some people's lives

I would have stopped it in time, except my watch also decided to put itself in water lock for some reason

you fell in snow
 
it has also been confirmed to save lives



they in depth tested it with vehicles, i imagine there's a bunch of engineers scratching their heads as to why skiing specifically is causing this. i also imagine they didnt test skiing or many other high velocity sports to see if it would cause a trigger. they just might now

and quite literally is saving some people's lives



you fell in snow

There are obviously more false positives than lives saved, taking much needed resources away from actual accidents. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a topic of conversation.
 
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I suspect many here will assume that because it's another day and another opportunity to smack Apple. People here live for that, and the perceived power it gives them, while feeling good in the process.
So because Apple releases a feature that is seriously interfering with emergency dispatch and people are questioning as to whether or not Apple did proper testing of the feature you deem it necessary to take digs at them?
 
No matter how much apple tests and simulates they can’t duplicate the real world experience of tens of millions of users.

I’m sure they are feeling the heat from even one false 911 call, but what their response will be we don’t know. And of course being apple this becomes a mushroom cloud as it’s or more added to the pile of daily false 911 calls.
 
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There will be some ratio where the false positives outweigh the value of true positives. If the ratio were one to one, it would still be worth it. But how about 5 to 1? 10 to 1? Should they delay releasing the feature until they get it to be better than one to one? Probably not.
And even if the current value is mixed/neutral, at least they are getting more data to refine the detection algorithms so it can be an obvious net positive in the future.

It's similar to the self driving car debate. Even if a self-driving car is better than an average human at driving, should we outlaw it because it sometimes makes stupid mistakes that humans wouldn't? With self-driving cars, an error can directly kill people. With crash detection, it will only potentially result in death because of opportunity cost.
 
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You don't know if they did test it in the real world or not. It would be pretty easy for them to make an app that records diagnostics and would tell the user when a hypothetical crash occurred. Just so happens not enough testing went in to rollercoasters and ski resorts. Go figure.
I’m not sure that makes it better like you think it does. If they did real world testing but didn’t test it on obvious scenarios like rollercoasters and skiing, that makes Apple look even worse.
 
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I had this happen. I took a spill coming off a chairlift and landed on my phone, and the next thing I know my watch is freaking out about being in a car accident and counting down to call 911. I would have stopped it in time, except my watch also decided to put itself in water lock for some reason, and before I could unlock it the 911 call had started. I just shouted into my watch that I was snowboarding and I was fine, that my watch had made the call, and the dispatcher said "Okay" and disconnected.

Next thing I know, I'm getting calls from my parents and my girlfriend, who had been notified by text message that I was in a car crash and emergency services were called. After calming *them* down, I discovered that my phone continued to update them with my location by text message for the next several hours, with no apparent way to shut it off. Even rebooting the phone didn't help. I finally had to look online and figure out that you have to do something really unintuitive like disabling Messages access to Location Services to completely shut it the hell up.

Really a half-baked "feature", honestly.
Thank you for being a beta tester.
 
Imagine being on a 5-minute roller coaster 🎢 ride and SOS gets activated while you are roller coasting.
Where can I find a 5 minute roller coaster?!?!

(It’s still not a great situation if this goes off in your pocket, but roller coasters are mostly 60 seconds or less. Also, roller coasters don’t usually crash, so hopefully false alarms are rare.)
 
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They could simply geolock the crash detection feature when visiting ski resorts and adventure parks just like Nissan do to lock out track mode unless you are at an actual racetrack.
 
It should not be activated by default. That also is a privacy issue, as it sends your location to emergency services. When setting up the iPhone for the first time, users should be asked if they want that feature. It is quite and overreach by Apple to activate it by default.

Many compare it with the emergency call feature in cars in the EU. The difference though is that the feature in card hardly ever gives false alarms.

Apple will brag about every person saved, but we will never know if somebody was killed, because emergency services were busy with false alarms from iPhones.
 
How about giving users an option to disable it?

Imagine being on a 5-minute roller coaster 🎢 ride and SOS gets activated while you are roller coasting. That can be terrifying! The emergency dispatcher might assume it's a Domestic Violence case.

I'm pretty sure that Apple currently recognizes such specific kinetics as a roller coaster. The problem with skiing is probably that the skier cannot take off his goggles and glove in time to operate the query/feedback phase in time. Perhaps Apple will retrofit with a specific gesture here (e.g. rotate forearm 3 times back and forth). This was probably not intuitive enough for Apple so far, and it is. We do not know their development discussion, nor the details for decisions about it. But Apple will now also retrofit for the slower ski glove remover, I am sure.

If the user can correct a false alarm, the rescue center can also reset the rescue attempt, if not, the problem is their billing system or inability.

Screenshot 2023-01-15 um 08.08.34.png

Giving the user the option to disable detection then leads to people claiming that the system was active and just didn't work. Especially people who do this by profession (strategic competitors) will do so.
After Apple has optimized the system, you can simply recommend it like a seatbelt, why then freedom of choice. Apple, please improve here quickly!
 
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