iPhone 14 Crash Detection Alerts Police Minutes After Early Morning Tasmania Accident

[compwiz1202]

Sure, but your argument seems too extreme. I would think the positives outweigh the negatives.

As it is, I'm sure the emergency call centers are getting prank calls now and also gets calls for minor incidents.

Not sure if you're looking for perfection tho., coz it'll be quite impossible to achieve.

Exactly, there's a lot of stuff other than Apple CD clogging the lines. Same as whenever people always focus on cellphone distracting driving. There's plenty of other stuff that distracts drivers, but no one mentions those.

 

[Mousse]

According to Australia's ABC News, a four-wheel drive truck towing a horse float collided with a tree stump in Tasmania at 1:45 a.m. on Monday.

Five people ranging in age from 14 to 20 were taken to the hospital,

Ah... Inexperience.😔 Did they have a light bar on the truck? Driving in the middle of nowhere at night, just regular headlights ain't gonna cut it. Must have been going at a decent clip too. That's a harsh lesson.☹️

 

[goonie4life9]

I don't know why MR publishers every story about crash detection. This isn't special to iPhones. Haven't the Pixel phones had crash detection since 2019?

Don’t fall for the Apple PR tricks. This is highlighted to counter the many reports of false positive calls that are causing issues for 911 systems.

 

[citysnaps]

Yes but people were responding to your post that said 1:100 was OK, maybe if Japanese emergency services were dealing with that ratio of false positives then their response might be different. Plus, there's liability involved in any such statement - no emergency service is going to come out and say turn off a system that could save someone's life - "we can't ask users to turn it off". That doesn't necessarily mean that they're actively promoting it.

Who's to say they aren't dealing with that ratio?

If they and others aren't (my view) that makes it a specious/silly argument.

In that case, why not make it 1: 1million just to get people even more stirred up?

 

[mw360]

I'm shocked that a phone company has to invent this.. this should have been an essential feature in all European cars at least.

Crash detection (aka eCall) was mandated in the EU nearly 5 years ago.

 

[headwerkn]

Never thought I see my home state mentioned on MacRumors. This happened just up the road from here. Sad for the horses involved (for the record two were killed in the accident itself, and the other two were euthanised shortly after due to their injuries) but word is the young occupants of the vehicle are all doing OK.

Police response was super fast (under 10 mins) which for anywhere, let alone a rural location a good distance away from the nearest town, is quite phenomenal. By all accounts iPhone Crash Detection played a not-insignificant role in that.

 

[whatgift]

One life saved is worth the 100 false positives.

You could argue that it is risking more lives as a result of the resources of first-responders not being available to deal with actual emergencies.

 

[quarkysg]

You could argue that it is risking more lives as a result of the resources of first-responders not being available to deal with actual emergencies.

That may be true, but if I'm not wrong, there hasn't been reports of such incidences. You would think that if this is really a problem, it would be widely reported no?

Are you suggesting that such improvement in tech should not happen at all because it potentially could have a negative effect that may or may not happen?

I think we can safely say that what Apple has implemented have indeed improves the lives of folks that got hurt. I think that is a good thing.

 

[whatgift]

That may be true, but if I'm not wrong, there hasn't been reports of such incidences. You would think that if this is really a problem, it would be widely reported no?

Are you suggesting that such improvement in tech should not happen at all because it potentially could have a negative effect that may or may not happen?

I think we can safely say that what Apple has implemented have indeed improves the lives of folks that got hurt. I think that is a good thing.

It's a matter of the benefit to cost ratio, which appears unclear when it comes to this feature. There have been several media reports on the issue around the world, and you can imagine that like in the Japan example, authorities are cautious about telling people to turn such a feature off since it could lead to legal liability on their part.

This article has an interesting discussion on the topic: https://www.sfara.com/four-ways-false-positives-destroy-the-business-of-crash-detection-programs/

 

[quarkysg]

It's a matter of the benefit to cost ratio, which appears unclear when it comes to this feature. There have been several media reports on the issue around the world, and you can imagine that like in the Japan example, authorities are cautious about telling people to turn such a feature off since it could lead to legal liability on their part.

This article has an interesting discussion on the topic: https://www.sfara.com/four-ways-false-positives-destroy-the-business-of-crash-detection-programs/

Again, I see all this as 'what-ifs' scenarios.

If we think about it, cars kills when driven irresponsibly. But it also benefits humanity (I think.) If we advocate removing cars from the road so that it doesn't have the ability to harm, we would still be riding on horses?

We should be advocating improving the tech rather than condemning it.

 

[Azathoth123]

OK I’ve been following along. A little dark, but true humor here ladies and gentlemen - 100,000 or even a million false positives are worth it, if it saves my life. 1,000 false positives to save YOUR life may be too taxing to the resources.

 

[whatgift]

We should be advocating improving the tech rather than condemning it.

It's not about condemning it, it's about not assuming that because a technology has good intentions and a small number of anecdotal reports that it is worthwhile. The false positives have the potential to become a massive issue, and saying that because it saves some lives that all other considerations are somehow less important is quite ridiculous. We could make a lot of things safer by taking drastic actions that affect people's quality of life, that doesn't mean we should.

EDIT: I would also bet that most people making such assumptions is not a first responder.

 

[quarkysg]

It's not about condemning it, it's about not assuming that because a technology has good intentions and a small number of anecdotal reports that it is worthwhile. The false positives have the potential to become a massive issue, and saying that because it saves some lives that all other considerations are somehow less important is quite ridiculous. We could make a lot of things safer by taking drastic actions that affect people's quality of life, that doesn't mean we should.

I agree with you.

So far, we have confirmed reports of tech showing benefits, and a whole lot of speculative discussions of said tech causing potential issues. I would say that the positives currently outweighed the negatives.

We have reports that Apple is taking actions to improve the tech, and that is a good thing. If Apple is sitting around doing nothing, then I say remove the tech.

 

[I7guy]

It's a matter of the benefit to cost ratio, which appears unclear when it comes to this feature. There have been several media reports on the issue around the world, and you can imagine that like in the Japan example, authorities are cautious about telling people to turn such a feature off since it could lead to legal liability on their part.

This article has an interesting discussion on the topic: https://www.sfara.com/four-ways-false-positives-destroy-the-business-of-crash-detection-programs/

Interesting article. However, I trust that Apple will make it better. I don't distrust Apple because the feature doesn't work 100%. I'm sure Sonny Bono could have wished for an iphone 14 with crash detection (not that it may have ultimately helped). Along those lines, I don't distrust Apple because people reported false positives with afib detection. These complex real world systems are seemingly difficult to get right out of the gate.

We've been flying for decades and yet aircrafts still crash despite a LOT of training, including simulators. That an aircraft crashes I accept that as a cost of living in a modern society and don't distrust the airline industry.

 

[didaho]

Incredible story. The false positives come with the territory, and they will need to further refine to address these — but the fact that it has seemingly saved lives makes the exercise well worth it.

Not easy to weed out false positives, becomes a trolley problem with only inconvenience tied to one of the tracks.
Emergency services should be calling the number back in the first instance to restrict that inconvenience to administrative personnel.

 

[whatgift]

It's interesting the thinking that the impact of false positives is simply an "inconvenience" - false positives and non-emergency calls cause a great deal of strain on often under-resourced first responders, and has a significant impact on response times for real emergencies.

 

[mech986]

I don't know why MR publishers every story about crash detection. This isn't special to iPhones. Haven't the Pixel phones had crash detection since 2019?

Even if all the pixels in the world from 2019 on had this feature, there’s only about 22M total of them out there. Apparently we haven’t heard about very many or any of them being helped by this crash detection feature, for reasons unknown - maybe they don’t drive, maybe they are really good drivers and never get into accidents, or maybe Google doesn’t want to pay for all the PR stories it could get with Pixels saving lives (sarcasm for those claiming Apple PR orchestrates all these stories).

For whatever reason, Android phones and smartwatches by Samsung, Google, others just don’t seem to get mentioned much in health or life saving situations. I’m assuming all those massive majority of Android users compared to Apple users have just as many or more accidents, car crashes, detectable health or safety problems. Of course, only high end smartphones and Watches have these features so that limits the Android feature population further.

No word yet is this feature works with motorcycle accidents?

my Apple Watch’s fall detection has recorded when I fell with my bike while cycling. Each time I was able to respond and shut down the countdown to emergency notification, otherwise I know 911 and emergency contacts would have been notified. I suspect motorcycle crashes are even more severe and energetic enough for an Apple Watch of iPhone with crash detection to trigger the Crash detection system.

So Americans late to the party as always? Anyway doesn't Tesla have this? Or does it require district administration to be in the loop to work?

GM had OnStar since the early 2000’s with car borne crash and accident sensors plus immediate notification of the call center.

 

[extrachrispy]

Is it? I think there’s a lot of emergency dispatchers/first responders who would disagree.

First responder here. I'd rather have a certain number of false positives than miss someone in need. That said, I don't want so many false positives that we end up with a "boy who cried wolf" lack of response--most of this county is covered by volunteers, not professional fire departments.