My iPhone went off 20 times before I realized it skiing in CO last week. I never even fell. Just skiing fast, jumping and stopping quickly. I turned it off on my phone after my mom called me worried, but my watch continued to send the messages. I assumed the settings were linked and the watch would deactivate with the phone, but my wife kept getting messages until I figured it out.
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Apple Collecting Feedback From Dispatchers Receiving False 911 Calls From Skiers
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This is the best speculation in this thread I've seen so far.
As far as skiing, look up Sonny Bono. One either wants crash detection while skiing or not.
Regardless of where and how decisions are made, Apple should've known that the abrupt movements associated with skiing and snowboarding could trigger "false 911 calls" and that it could create problems for 911 dispatchers and potentially cause more harm than good in these circumstances. As such, there should've been better functionality/systems in place to prevent this from happening.
I think it makes sense to want to have the functionality available where ski resorts and roller coasters exist (accidents can happen there too) but not if it puts more lives at risk than it saves. This needed much more pre-launch testing and scrutiny than other types of features/software.
No matter how much preflight testing is done, can’t simulate the usage of hundreds of millions of iPhone users. Much if the criticism posted in Macrumors takes no thought to level, but I doubt anyone could have done any better in apples shoes.
If they collected data from iPhones there would be accusations of illegal entry into a computing device. The 911 call centers probably have some information apple wants and can get legally.
This is what I am trying to explain to all in the thread, Apple 100% would have known about this because it would have been mentioned during the design process. I know this because I talk from experience of being involved in the design process of electronic products (have sat in numerous design meetings where specific things are discussed). As i mentioned in my earlier post, 'Brainstorming' meetings would have taken place to determine all the good things about the product and all the bad things about the product. There would have been meetings to discuss points of failure, meaning what levels and scenarios would the product pass or fail, also meetings to determine if the product would/could produce false positives and how to prevent them.
I bet if Apple was forced to produced the minutes of the design meetings for the crash detection system we would find that people would have mentioned scenarios such as skiing and rollercoasters but got dismissed because the function of the crash detection system was for those in vehicles. I bet we would see such questions from the design team as 'What if someone goes skiing and falls?, what if someone is on a fast and bumpy theme park ride, will the system think they have been in a crash?
Therefore, as someone who has been involved in the design process I find what Apple has allegedly done is very disgusting and very disturbing because you do not release such a system unless ALL variables have been tested and eliminated. Clearly this was not done due to the amount of false positives the system is sending to the emergency services due to everyday activities that exist outside of being in a vehicle.
There's the problem right there, garbage algorithm. The iPhone isn't sending data when it calls 911.
So someone can’t get into an emergency situation at either of those places?
The correct answer is that Apple will continue to collect data and iterate on their feature, to make it more accurate in distinguishing between these scenarios.
Garbage in, garbage out.theyre only collecting data from 911 dispatchers, (data such as when and where it happened) .
Hmm, the article states that Apple is collecting data from 911 dispatchers, not that they are only collecting data from one said source.
Are you able to verify that this is indeed the case? My takeaway from this is that Apple is not unaware of said problem, and are actively monitoring and reviewing the situation. And there are a lot of iPhone 14 and series 8 watches out in the wild in order to trigger so many false positives.
As any company would. So again, it seems like a whole lot of outrage for the sake of manufactured outrage.
I also wonder what it would take for Google’s own crash detection offering to hit the news. Apart from a desperate plug during their own keynote, Google doesn’t seem to have done anything to promote said feature.
Apple designed the system. They should've recognized that abrupt movements associated with skiing, roller coasters, etc. would trigger "false 911 calls" which could overwhelm 911 dispatchers and put other people's lives at risk. We're not talking about browser or word processing software glitches here, this is dealing with potential life or death emergency situations.
And when you think about Sonny Bono you realize that it may be very difficult to never have any false positives.
Yes. We have that every day with fake 911 calls. We as a society might have to accept some false positives for the greater good of saving lives when there is a true positive.
What happens if you are critical and bleeding and moving to find your phone?
Lol google has had this feature for years and it's documented as working. They literally ran a commercial where the Pixel crash detection saved a guys life. Google's crash detection works and doesn't constantly call 911 for no reason
If it works, don’t you think we would have heard more of it in the media by now? For instance, fall / crash detection on the iPhone / watch hits the news both when it works and it doesn’t. Instead of Google having to desperately plug their own service in response to Apple’s own product keynote.
In one of a few publicized cases, a guy who was knocked unconscious after rolling into a ravine was rescued when Crash Detection called 911.
Lol huh? So because android users don't constantly flock to the media when there basic phone features just work it means that it definitely doesn't work? Sorry apple users are surprised when their phone features work......
You didn’t answer my question. Why then did Google feel the need to run an ad tooting their own horn, desperately reminding users that they came up with crash detection first, not Apple? It seems sad that these companies are wholly incapable of standing on their own, and need to borrow Apple’s clout to prop up their own offerings.
Or maybe Google has been too busy shuttering their own services one by one to give something like this too much thought.
Welt first to start. You never asked a question you made a statement but yea ok.......I clearly responded to your statement.You didn’t answer my question. Why then did Google feel the need to run an ad tooting their own horn, desperately reminding users that they came up with crash detection first, not Apple? It seems sad that these companies are wholly incapable of standing on their own, and need to borrow Apple’s clout to prop up their own offerings.
Or maybe Google has been too busy shuttering their own services one by one to give something like this too much thought.
Also the ad was run nearly a year prior to apple releasing their flawed crash detection, so yea google never once hopped on apples clout as apple didn't have the feature. Also it's common for companies to advertise features that their phone offers it's not unheard of or desperate. Google wasn't desperately advertising just saying hey we have this.
They did give the crash detection feature alot more thought then apple did clearly as unlike apple it works and again doesn't falsely call 911 hampering valuable emergency services for people who actually need them.
Not one false positive ever?
Functions as intended as apples implementation.
Never one false positive?