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I'd argue that they could check for movement after the initial crash detection. That should help to rule out a number of more common edge cases.
This makes me think of some road rager ramming someone off the road and then snatching their iPhone and running off
 
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as it should...
When WSJ tested it in junkyard and found that the crash detection did not work, an Apple Spokesperson said that " It wasn't connected to Bluetooth or CarPlay, which would have indicated the car was in use, and the vehicles might not have traveled enough distance prior to the crash to indicate driving. Had the iPhone received those extra indicators—and had its GPS shown the cars were on a real road—the likelihood of an alert would have been greater, he said." So, how did the rollercoaster trigger a crash warning even though the phone was not connected to airplay or satisfy the extra indicators to indicate driving? Was the Spokesperson talking fibbing when he spoke to WSJ?
 
The one thing that seems to be escaping those posting here is that there might not be an easily detectable statistical difference between the forces exerted by a car crash and the forces exerted by a roller coaster, particularly if the accelerometers on the iPhone are max'ed out. It makes you wonder how many G's roller coasters subject the punters to.

In any case, no doubt signs will go up in amusement parks to turn off crash detection on iPhone before going on their roller coaster rides. Indeed, it will be like the warnings about heart conditions and pregnancy on Space Mountain - it will be a selling point for those acceleration addicts who consider it badge of honour to go on a ride that could trigger crash detection.

Wonder if the Pixel has the same issue?
 
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Wow people have gotten so reliant on their phones. We have done this before cell phones were a thing and as common as they are now. “Let’s meet back here in X amount of time”. How did people get by in the 80s or 90s or earlier wow!!!
Or even better... Most theme parks are going cashless. People load their cards onto their phones to not have to carry a debit card/wallet (or purse) so it is right on their phone and they can't leave it in their cars. But yeah we get it, you walked up hill both ways going to school. Times changed, get over it.
 
When WSJ tested it in junkyard and found that the crash detection did not work, an Apple Spokesperson said that " It wasn't connected to Bluetooth or CarPlay, which would have indicated the car was in use, and the vehicles might not have traveled enough distance prior to the crash to indicate driving. Had the iPhone received those extra indicators—and had its GPS shown the cars were on a real road—the likelihood of an alert would have been greater, he said." So, how did the rollercoaster trigger a crash warning even though the phone was not connected to airplay or satisfy the extra indicators to indicate driving? Was the Spokesperson talking fibbing when he spoke to WSJ?

A roller coaster with BT and CarPlay - who’d a thought?
😂🤣😂🤣🎢
 
What world we are living in - living at the mercy of our phones.
If this is a problem that is worth making a big deal out of.... Jesus!

There is a mental recession going around this planet, not just financial.

Turn the darn car crash detection before jumping into such rides and go about your life.
Humanity has reached the peak of boredom and makes drama about the most irrelevant things.

What's next? Without devices we won't go out of the house soon? 🤕🤕🤕
If I have to turn the feature off before doing something, then I'm still a slave to my phone.
 
This sounds like one of the more straightforward use cases for Machine Learning - record a lot of data on roller coasters and train a model to recognize the difference. Apple could afford to send someone on every roller coaster in the world to create an essentially perfect training set.
 
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Not a dumb idea at all, just another piss poor implementation from apple and their work from home engineers.
The issue is that with this stuff it's so touchy. You don't want to miss a crash, but if it's too aggressive, you get lots of false positives that wastes emergency resources. Worst case you get what I was thinking and someone else posted that someone dies in a real emergency because of the false crash calls.
 


The iPhone 14's Crash Detection feature is accidentally being triggered and therefore calling emergency services when users are riding a roller coaster rather than being involved in a real automotive accident.

iPhone-14-Car-Crash-Detection.jpg

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, several users of the new iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro at amusement parks across the United States have reported emergency services and contacts being alerted that they've been involved in a car crash as they've ridden roller coasters. The accidental trigger of Apple's latest safety features is likely caused by the sudden breaking and movement of roller coasters, triggering the iPhone's sensors to misinterpret the movement as a car crash.

The Wall Street Journal reports at least six incidents of emergency services being called for false alarms. In response to the false alarms, an Apple spokesperson said Apple tested the feature with over a million hours of car crash data and real-world driving analysis. Several tests have already been done to test the accuracy of the iPhone 14's Crash Detection, with varying results.

In response to a test done by The Wall Street Journal in a junkyard where the iPhone failed to notice some car crashes, Apple said the testing condition did not provide the iPhone with enough factors to trigger an alert. Apple said the iPhones were not connected to Bluetooth or CarPlay and may not have traveled enough distance before impact for the device to register the crash. Crash Detection is available on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch Ultra.

Article Link: iPhone 14's Crash Detection Mistaking Roller Coaster Rides for Car Crashes
It just works, haha 🤣
 
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I am 100% sure theme parks would not allow guests to bring their phones onto the rollercoasters.
All roller coasters allow you to take a phone with you. Unless they have permission to pat you down before each ride, which they don't. They won't let you take them out to video while riding, but even that isn't enforceable once the train has left the station. (Never get to use that phase literarily)
 
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As a software developer, you should always think about edge cases when developing a new feature. And rollercoasters should have been an obvious one. I guess that the last 3 remaining smart devs at Apple were all working on the dynamic island.

This is a pointless feature that I will disable as soon as I get my 14 pro. Most likely when you’re having an accident, other drivers will see you and dial 911. Like it already happens.
And when someone has a heart attack while driving on a back country road? Let's put a persons life in the "Most likely" category. No point in looking both ways when crossing a street, cars are most likely driving on the correct side of the road.
 
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All roller coasters allow you to take a phone with you. Unless they have permission to pat you down before each ride, which they don't. They won't let you take them out to video while riding, but even that isn't enforceable once the train has left the station. (Never get to use that phase literarily)
That is incorrect. Irresponsible jackasses ignore the rules and tend to run away hoping to avoid the consequences of ignoring the rules. You are right the park owners are not going to engage in an invasive search to make sure riders are not violating the rules but the rider is liable if they injury a rider by violating those rules.
 
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They need to AND this data with whether the user is on the road or not. It may be hard to do, but perhaps it's doable.
That is not doable since vehical crash or rollovers can take you quite a distance away from the road. The easiest solution which some poster said is to have the GPS to check if you are at an amusement park which would eliminate the false triggers.
 
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OnStar has been having false positives for years. Lots of videos out there where the onStar agent comes on while the cars are on drag strips, race tracks, etc. Where there are lots of high G loading events.

They called multiple times during one lap..


it will take a few years of edge cases to refine the algorithms. I would rather talk to the 911 center than die in a ravine or at the bottom of a hill where no one saw me slide off the road.
The OnStar in my 2019 Corvette Z06 Convertible has never has a false positive crash detection and I do put my Corvette thru its paces. I my opinion I think your sources of information are misinformation and total BS.
 
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The OnStar in my 2019 Corvette Z06 Convertible has never has a false positive crash detection and I do put my Corvette thru its paces. I my opinion I think your sources of information are misinformation and total BS.
Just because you have not had it happen does not mean other owners of OnStar equipped cars have not had a false crash detection activation. It does happen but I do not know what the percentage of those false activation are and the circumstances that enabled that to happen. I imagine it is low or you would hear more about those incidents.
 
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What world we are living in - living at the mercy of our phones.
If this is a problem that is worth making a big deal out of.... Jesus!

There is a mental recession going around this planet, not just financial.

Turn the darn car crash detection before jumping into such rides and go about your life.
Humanity has reached the peak of boredom and makes drama about the most irrelevant things.

What's next? Without devices we won't go out of the house soon? 🤕🤕🤕

Here's a banana. You seem hangry. ;)

The fact is that old logic no longer applies to our new world. So much is changing, so fast, and we need our expectations to adjust along with those changes.

For example, we're driving down the road in our home town, complaining about how much traffic there is now compared to "before". (Population in our communities has grown by 40% in past 20 years... that' s lot of new people). Yet, we fail to realize that we're in a car, too, just like them. Everybody has the right to have their own car. Do we spend our lives frustrated and complaining about that, or just accept it, be happy, and learn to live with it?

Just because our new phones have a fancy feature doesn't mean that we've giving something up of ourselves. We're not "living at the mercy" of these phones. It's a handy safety feature that may save our life one day. It's a value-add, as our world gets more complicated and busy. Our devices can help.

As for turning off some features before going on a rollercoaster, I agree. I had no idea that Android had crash detection back 3 years.... that was news to me, so is clearly not working well since I don't see any articles claiming that the feature saved people's lives, or went off accidentally. :D But we will see articles about iPhones saving people's lives. That I'm sure.
 
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It has happened since I remember a story awhile back ago when a rollercoaster passenger was injured by somebody’s cellphone and she asked the publics help in identifying the person on the amusement park surveillance tape so they could sue them for the injuries they sustained. But if you want to play the lottery you can just do not be surprised if you lose.
So, my phone is going to just slide out of a zipped shut pocket? I guess I need a better zipper guy.
 
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As a software developer, you should always think about edge cases when developing a new feature. And rollercoasters should have been an obvious one. I guess that the last 3 remaining smart devs at Apple were all working on the dynamic island.

This is a pointless feature that I will disable as soon as I get my 14 pro. Most likely when you’re having an accident, other drivers will see you and dial 911. Like it already happens.
What happens if you're driving down a lonely deserted spooky road in the Bayou at night, and a swamp thing scares you and you careen off the road and crash into the swamp, and get surrounded by hungry alligators while slowly sinking, all while nobody else is around to see or help you?

In reality this coaster thing isn't much of an issue as you have to be connected to something on Bluetooth too. But I can see Apple adding a toggle for it to control center, like next to Airport Mode or something.
 
But I guess it’s hard to think about these features that any pleb like me can come up with during the ten seconds it took to write this reply.

The amount of Dunning-Kruger showcased in this comment section is astounding...
 
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