Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
...

In the years I've been alive, I've had very few accidents.
In those accidents, I've never been rendered unable to call or walk away from them.
I suspect very few exceed my averages, really.
This is a feature that Apple adds for publicity's sake with an incredible level of risk to failure, with almost no realization of benefit.

"In the years I've been alive..." Thats kind of the point. People that are in severe accidents and are unable to call are frequently no longer alive if they don't get immediate assistance.
 
Eh, the Apple watch had emergency services calling setup by default for years and wasn't asked to turn it off.
As far as I’m aware it wasn’t known to make a stack of completely unintended emergency services calls with no involvement of the user. Bum dials might be possible but that’s still people touching the device to trigger that.

The risk of it going off when unneeded is bad enough, but the risk of it being relied on and not working is ridiculous.
But who is crashing a car and relying on this to save them? It’s a safety net. Your suggested alternative is to disable the feature and count on someone else making the call if they see you in a crash. Surely having this on as a backup is worth while. If the call doesn’t go out it’s the same as having the feature off anyway. Perhaps the calls made quicker by the Watch and that one or two minutes saves a life.

I doubt any third party will be influenced to not call emergency services on behalf of a crash victim because they saw the person in the car had a watch on and assumed the Watch has already dialed out, so I don’t see the risk.
 
How about living in a walkable city and never getting into a car, and valuing everything you can squeeze out of the battery because when you’re out and about you don’t have access to a charging source and an extra power bank would add to the weight you have to carry on your own back?
I'm all for walkable cities, but even as a longtime New Yorker without a car for 20 years I've still found myself in a cab or in a car when I travel.

I also wonder if this could be triggered in the event of a bike crash or being hit by a car as a pedestrian.
 
  • Like
Reactions: System603
As far as I’m aware it wasn’t known to make a stack of completely unintended emergency services calls with no involvement of the user. Bum dials might be possible but that’s still people touching the device to trigger that.


But who is crashing a car and relying on this to save them? It’s a safety net. Your suggested alternative is to disable the feature and count on someone else making the call if they see you in a crash. Surely having this on as a backup is worth while. If the call doesn’t go out it’s the same as having the feature off anyway. Perhaps the calls made quicker by the Watch and that one or two minutes saves a life.

I doubt any third party will be influenced to not call emergency services on behalf of a crash victim because they saw the person in the car had a watch on and assumed the Watch has already dialed out, so I don’t see the risk.
My comment was regarding an unintentional issue many had where the crown would trigger a call to emergency services. This was not intended from the user and in a panic, was not clear how to disable.

Either way, I don't know why people are getting so angry about what others decide to do with their phones.
 
I can’t think of any intelligent reason why someone would turn this off for normal use. Geez, it’s not going to call 911 if your phone falls off the vent mount or the bag of groceries falls over…. I’m glad they allow turning it off though because I think everyone should have a choice.

The only thing that would make sense is if you’re driving in some sort of demolition derby where you intend to crash then obviously turn it off.
 
I wonder if crashing on a dirt bike would trigger this.
I think this would trigger fall detection if it’s turned on. I don’t think it’s that’s turned on by default if you’re under a certain age. From the video explaining it, they said that checks for airbags going off and pressure differences, so I wouldn’t count on it. I have a feeling they’ve set this thing where it’s not going to get false positives.
 
I think this would trigger fall detection if it’s turned on. I don’t think it’s that’s turned on by default if you’re under a certain age. From the video explaining it, they said that checks for airbags going off and pressure differences, so I wouldn’t count on it. I have a feeling they’ve set this thing where it’s not going to get false positives.
I think that's great news, i wouldn't want it to anyway. Most crashes you walk away from.
 
Why would anyone turn this off? Are people that lazy that the convenience of having to click on "cancel" in case you're in just a minor car crash and prefer calling the emergency hotline yourself is more important than actually saving your life in case you really need the feature?
1) If we have a lifestyle other than the sedentary lifestyle you seem to be so evangelically fond of. Climbers, whitewater kayakers, skydivers, even regular people who once in a while go to Disneyland are going to see an order of magnitude more spurious activations of this feature than appropriate.

In 25 years of driving, I’ve had zero accidents that required an ambulance, and hundreds of “incidents” unrelated to driving that would’ve likely triggered this feature.

The last time I called an ambulance, which fortunately was intentional, the bill cost more than my iPhone 13 Pro. And that was in a village. Suppose I had an iPhone 14 and did a routine waterfall drop in my current hometown without remembering to first disable this feature. I wouldn’t be able to silence the alert, because well waterfalls are loud so I wouldn’t hear it, and my phone is in my PFD pocket where I wouldn’t see it. Apple would send out a SAR team, and the State of West Virginia does not treat false SAR calls as a charitable operation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aloshka
As far as I’m aware it wasn’t known to make a stack of completely unintended emergency services calls with no involvement of the user. Bum dials might be possible but that’s still people touching the device to trigger that.


But who is crashing a car and relying on this to save them? It’s a safety net. Your suggested alternative is to disable the feature and count on someone else making the call if they see you in a crash. Surely having this on as a backup is worth while. If the call doesn’t go out it’s the same as having the feature off anyway. Perhaps the calls made quicker by the Watch and that one or two minutes saves a life.

I doubt any third party will be influenced to not call emergency services on behalf of a crash victim because they saw the person in the car had a watch on and assumed the Watch has already dialed out, so I don’t see the risk.
My “suggested alternative” is for this feature to be attached to the setting where it is appropriate. I have it already in my car. I’m likely to be in a car when I am in a car accident, so having the feature on a car makes a lot of sense. For me personally, and a lot of other so-called “adrenaline junkies”, gravity shift events happen frequently and usually have nothing to do with driving.

This feature would have to be narrowly tuned to be useful to me. If it can accurately distinguish between rapidly decelerating from at least 40mph to a stop, versus an intentional controlled freefall of 6-20 feet followed by minimal vertical motion, then it would be useful and safe. Actually that’s not enough; if I’m skiing, I may have numerous freefall events in a row, intentionally, without ever really stopping my downward momentum.
But reports are coming out already if *many* spurious alerts nowhere near cars.

20 seconds to look at your phone screen and disable it isn’t enough. “I’m unconscious” is far from the only possible reason why I might go 20 seconds without looking at my phone during a recreational activity, especially if I’m intentionally minimizing phone use.
 
Everytime I "make" my bed in the morning (yanking the bedspread into place), my watch thinks I've fallen down. Also, trimming the hedges is problematic. I would expect the crash detection will require ~20 mph to zero in about ~1 second and thus have few false detections. However, accidentally dropping the phone out the window while snapping a road trip photo might trigger a false crash event.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.