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I’ll apply the right amount of hate where necessary, but the fall detection isn’t magic. It does what it can to save lives. Don’t buy it not happy. For me, if it saves someone’s life who cares if it triggers random phone notification. I’m sure it’s not a huge amount.
 
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If Apple was billed a token amount, say $50, for every false alert that might help fix it.
During skiing in Switzerland I had a fall and watch started to beep asking if I needed help just touched no and that was that. I have no issues with this
 
idk man, sometimes when i crash out i just lay there and look up at the sky 😂
Yup and after a while other people who see you just laying there will shout and ask if you’re ok 😂.

I’m thinking maybe vibrate after a minute with a prompt “Are you ok?” and start calling if there’s no response in the next 30 secs… still a bit aggressive, but I think it’s a close enough facsimile of how a real person would react to someone laying still on the ground on the slopes after a fall.
 

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.
FWIW, many rural areas are understaffed on a per capita basis. Moreover, the distances that must be covered by services are also very large.

It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the impact of false alarms is even greater in rural areas — be it financial or diverted resources — when adjusted for population size. There are many ski resorts outside Summit County. Most of them, actually.
 
Apple’s PR statement and iOS messaging reads like crash detection was only tested with cars and that they didn’t consider the many, many other situations that might trigger it: snow machines, ATVs, driving a vehicle in rough terrain off-road, skiing, mountain biking, etc.

Decidedly OFF.
 
Maybe another solution would be a message popping up on the device saying that crash detection is off while they are at a specific location.

Maybe they'll be able to geolocate and say "That car crash is on a ski slope, so nope."

Then peopel would complain about Apple tracking them.

If it makes the call and then were to cancel it, it still goes into 9-1-1 as a hang-up call. The call taker would then be required to call the person back. If the person didn't answer on several attempts back, depending on the situation, if location information was available, a police/fire response might still be sent to the location anyways. This wouldn't necessarily help.

Where I live a hang call gets police, fire and ambulance. Our police recommend dialing 911 and hanging up if you feel calling and talking would put you in danger.
 
I was in a rental truck, pulled into a parking spot and abruptly stopped and then immediately opened the door and ran into a building quickly as was late and it triggered the you've been in an accident which seemed baffling. Driving at parking lot speed, and then stopping albeit quickly presumably should be no where in the realm of gforce detections etc that should trigger it presumably. And while I got out of the car, quickly that's very different than if a body was instantly thrown out of a car or something. Never happened since, but then again haven't been in any situations where it's even close to something that could trigger.
 
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.
As a fellow taxpayer I disagree. General public safety outweighs the thousandth of a penny you will ever be dinged for this specific feature over your lifetime.
 
Apple’s PR statement and iOS messaging reads like crash detection was only tested with cars and that they didn’t consider the many, many other situations that might trigger it: snow machines, ATVs, driving a vehicle in rough terrain off-road, skiing, mountain biking, etc.

Decidedly OFF.

Combine ALL of those vs the time people spend driving normal cars under normal circumstances and then convince me that your pile of fringe cases should be prioritized.
 
Why would Apple be fined? Apple hasn't broken the law in regards to filing a false report to 911 etc.
Well, who should be fined? Should it be the owner of the iPhone?

I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like there must be regulations about automated 911 calls? As a thought experiment, let's say some rando Android developer releases an app that claims to work like Apple's crash detection. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work and ends up calling 911 constantly, every time the user accidentally drops their phone or whatever.

I assume this is illegal (and if it's not, it ought to be made illegal). Who gets fined? The app developer? The user? How bad does the software have to be before laws kick in?
 
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It's not cringy or cringey. People hate on Apple for everything they do, but the Apple Watch has saved many lives. I'm sure the people that are here today because of their Apple Watch wouldn't think it's cringey. My Apple Watch alerted me to a medical condition where I needed emergency treatment. I can't say for sure it saved my life because I don't have an alternate person to test the other outcome but it sure helped me. I appreciate what Apple has done with the watch and I wear mine all the time!
Well, that’s pretty vague. Was it really an emergency? Lol
 
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As a fellow taxpayer I disagree. General public safety outweighs the thousandth of a penny you will ever be dinged for this specific feature over your lifetime.
I think you're underestimating the burden this places on these small EMS departments. They will need to hire additional personnel and that's not cheap. More to the point, it's not the public's responsibility to pay for Apple's crap code that doesn't do what it's supposed to. If Apple can't fix the problem, let them pay for all the false positives they are creating across the world. It's not the public's responsibility to subsidize a trillion dollar corporation that is flush with cash and enjoys a 40%+ margin.
 
If Apple was billed a token amount, say $50, for every false alert that might help fix it.
They absolutely should be billed. They've create a huge problem for EMS departments and all of these false positives will inevitably lead to real accidents not getting the immediate attention they require. EMS departments will have to hire additional staff and invest in additional resources to deal with all of the false positives and we, the tax payers, will have to cover the bill...while Apple continues to rake in the $$$. It's not the taxpayer's responsibility to pay for Apple's inability to fix their garbage code.
 
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To say this was half-baked would be generous. It's a lump of soft, room temperature clay. In a recent article within the past 48 hours, one county said their 911 calls are up 30% due to Apple's "new technology". They're pissed, and they should be. Apple just crapped on 911 dispatchers and emergency call centers by releasing this way too early, and they should be sued for the time it's taking away from real emergencies, real people that need help. All to sell a few electronic devices to help Timmy's bottom line.
 
That's a really good idea! Make an obvious setting to pause crash detection, and maybe fall detection as well. With GPS it could remind the user they're at a ski area and to do this, but that also depends on the user paying attention to notifications
Yes, I overlooked GPS sensitive pause. Good idea. And no biggie taking your phone out, your gloves/mitts off for a sec at bottom or top of the run.
 
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Well google had this on their phones for years and they have a better grasp on this feature it would seem. This isn't one of these Apple does it better, more like Apple does it worse by far.
 
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.

I used to be an EMT and in my own anecdotal experience very few people die in urban car crashes. This might be different in the US for whatever reason, but where I worked the speeds were just not high enough to lead to fatal crashes.

I don't have any hard data, but I'd think the number of fatalities would be higher in rural areas, which usually have higher speeds, can be just as overloaded as urban services, have more area to cover and way longer travel times.
 
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