I bet you 80% of people don’t even know this feature exists because Apple is surprisingly awful at highlighting new features in their OS unless you take the time to actually study the dedicated page on their website
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Apple Responds to Yet Another Report About iPhone 14's Crash Detection Feature Triggering False 911 Calls
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I bet you 80% of people don’t even know this feature exists because Apple is surprisingly awful at highlighting new features in their OS unless you take the time to actually study the dedicated page on their website
Well, if it's off by default and they don't know it exists, they won't have anything to worry about.
Agreed, but if the feature were off by default and they didn't know it existed, there's no chance of them triggering a false positive.
Bottom line for me is that this feature isn't something that I, as a tax payer, should have to subsidize. Apple clearly designed a flawed feature and the tax payer shouldn't be made to cover the costs associated with all of these false positives. Charge the user. Charge Apple. But don't pass it along to the public.
While I cannot speak for the ski/snowboarding issues, I can say for certain that it can go off when simply dropped on a soft bed. Actually happened to me. Glad I caught it before it made the call.
i have made sure that both fall detection and crash detection are turned off on my watch.
but, i am hoping that apple makes a very simple adjustment.
i want it to leave in place all the current algorithms, but, provide an option for official emergency services to not be called, and instead it only calls the emergency contacts you have listed in your medical information.
to make it useful in this scenario, apple would need to also send to my emergency contact my location info, so that my emergency contact can then share that precise location info with official emergency services if im not responding or actually need help.
but, i am hoping that apple makes a very simple adjustment.
i want it to leave in place all the current algorithms, but, provide an option for official emergency services to not be called, and instead it only calls the emergency contacts you have listed in your medical information.
to make it useful in this scenario, apple would need to also send to my emergency contact my location info, so that my emergency contact can then share that precise location info with official emergency services if im not responding or actually need help.
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Well my first suggestion was to wait 30 seconds before calling, and to not call 911 if the user starts moving on GPS. So there would be no call to return.
I offered the second option if there’s an insistence on getting the call into 911 asap. If 911 gets an automated call saying the iPhone detected a crash, then an automated call saying it was wrong, that should be the end of it.
It’s not the same as someone dialing 911 and being unable to speak, and should be treated differently. The problem you described would a process issue for lawmakers and emergency operators to address.
But it’s not sustainable at this level of refinement.
It’s obviously a problem.
I think agencies should bill Apple for wasted resources.
I’m sure Apple’s working on it but chargebacks will light a fire under them.
I’m really surprised that Apple’s algorithms and sensors aren’t able to adequately distinguish between these two seemingly different use cases.
Isn’t this more likely “fall detection”.
Doesn’t crash detection rely on being near a road with a sudden stop?
Doesn’t crash detection rely on being near a road with a sudden stop?
Your logical fallacy is burden of proof
You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove.
yourlogicalfallacyis.com
Oh, and you can tack a straw man on to that, because nobody has claimed that anybody has died yet - just that the false alarms are creating a risk (we do have crystal clear evidence that the false alarms are happening, and it's not rocket science to see that dealing with false calls can cause risky delays).
It's up to the people advocating crash detection to prove that the benefits outweigh the risks - preferably before rolling the product out to millions of users.
A good start would be to compare the number of people dying in car crashes because nobody called the emergency services in time, vs. people who died when the emergency were called promptly but arrived too late (where any sort of false alarm can be a factor). Now, I don't claim to have the data, but thinking about it, the first will be something that happens occasionally out in the sticks where there are no passers-by to raise the alarm, while the majority of fatalities are going to be occurring in heavily populated areas with plenty of eyeballs but overloaded emergency services.
A handful of self-selecting anecdotes where crash detection happened to work spectacularly (which often don't actually prove that people would have died without crash detection) don't really cut it.
The more Apple tries to cut down on false positives, the more actual accidents it will miss. I’ll bet the source of all the false calls is people not knowing their phone/watch is calling 911. If that is the actual problem, Apple can fix this with a really loud noise indicating it is about to make an emergency call, telling people to cancel the alarm. A unique noise or pattern is definitely a lot harder to ignore than what they have now.
This feature always reeked of "will be buggy as hell in the first iPhones and Apple Watches that support it, but will mature in the one or two releases thereafter". I'm guessing iPhone 15 and 16 will have ironed out these issues.
Calling someone a drama queen, just because you don't know the environment and everything that's involved in emergency dispatch is a little pre-mature. Emergency dispatch is a constant juggle of what to respond with and where (well of course depends on city) ... I can tell you that dispatchers don't last long, because prioritizing/siphoning through what people think is an emergency is tough ... now add various technologies to that mix.
Making a life/death decisions is unfortunately daily bread for an emergency dispatcher ... and yes ... it is an ALL DAY, or a 24-36hr shift rather ... affair of you juggling departments resources to place them where they need to be as effective as possible - in the ever popular "lets defund everything" society, so a distraction ... even one ... can affect a lot of things. Yes I know, I sound like a drama queen
I'm a 911 Dispatch Supervisor. So far a MUCH bigger problem is iPhones being pushed into cupholders which squeezes the side buttons down and activates Emergency Call mode. This happens a dozen times a day in my small CommCentre and it drives calltakers crazy. And yup, can't wait until all the jetskiiers, waterskiiers, and wakeboarders watches start calling-in crashes this summer. Time to retire.
I have a question that I genuinely would like to know the answer to:
Has any of the emergency dispatch units in these various ski resort communities (or the local governments in general) tried to educate the skiing public about turning off ‘Crash Detection’ before going skiing/snowboarding?
Has there been any outreach from the local governments to the resort owners (Vail Resorts and others) to maybe put up some signs or pamphlets or whathaveyou?
And again, that’s a genuine question — I’m not trying to deflect responsibility away from Apple or anything. I‘m just legitimately curious if anyone knows the answer (as I don’t live anywhere near the ski communities listed in the article).
Has any of the emergency dispatch units in these various ski resort communities (or the local governments in general) tried to educate the skiing public about turning off ‘Crash Detection’ before going skiing/snowboarding?
Has there been any outreach from the local governments to the resort owners (Vail Resorts and others) to maybe put up some signs or pamphlets or whathaveyou?
And again, that’s a genuine question — I’m not trying to deflect responsibility away from Apple or anything. I‘m just legitimately curious if anyone knows the answer (as I don’t live anywhere near the ski communities listed in the article).
Sounds like job security to me.
And what an unfortunate last name to have growing up. I live five minutes from Heavenly (a Vail resort) in Lake Tahoe and I haven't seen anything like that at any of our resorts.
If they can't geofence it, then Apple should really disable this function until they have it better dialed in. It's just not ready. Pop up a one-touch-to-call dialog when a crash is detected until it can be trusted to get it right automatically and use those results to better train the system.
Can't emergency services charge the user for false alarms? That would encourage people to turn it off when they're skiing, for example.
Can't emergency services charge the user for false alarms? That would encourage people to turn it off when they're skiing, for example.
The funniest part of this whole situation is that Trina spoke out against Apple’s crash detection and Apple sent four representatives to watch (or control) her while also not acknowledging Trina’s claims in its statement
Should use GPS and wifi triangulation to disable feature on ski slopes, at amusement parks, etc. It’s not like the feature is guaranteed anyway, so if it misses the occasional car crash adjacent to these heavily populated places, so what? Emergency services are already stationed nearby anyway.