My Pixel has car crash detection. One feature of it that I like, is the phone tries to interact with me first. Then, if I don't respond, it will contact emergency services.

My Galaxy watch does similar. After a hard fall, it sounds an alarm & vibrates for 60 seconds, then calls my emergency contact if I don't disable it.

Can anyone with Apple products verify if they operate the same way? Or do they just immediately call emergency services?

Edit: article says Apple gives 10 second to cancel the 'emergency.' Maybe software should lengthen this slightly, or try harder to notify the user.

10 seconds is way too short for skiers. When you're on the slopes most people are wearing gloves that aren't touchscreen friendly and the watch is probably also sandwiched between a base layer and the outer ski jacket which makes vibrations hard to feel and notice. And when you finally notice, you need to come to a safe stop where you won't be a danger/obstacle to anybody coming down behind you, take off your glove so you can interact with the touchscreen, and finally cancel the call.

Somebody didn't think this one through and I think Apple needs to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Let alone the few seconds it takes to get up from a wipeout. How many of us sometimes just lay there a few seconds to laugh at ourselves or catch our breath. 10s is definitely not enough!

From a story on DNYUZ:

> FRISCO, Colo. — On a recent sunny Sunday morning, following a night of fluffy snowfall, tens of thousands of skiers flocked to the resorts of Summit County. Just minutes after the lift lines opened, sirens began blaring in the 911 emergency service center, where four staff members were taking calls and dispatching help.

> Each jarring alert was a new incoming call, heralding a possible car crash, heart attack or other life-threatening situation. Often, the phone operators heard a chilling sound at the far end of the line: silence, perhaps from a caller too incapacitated to respond.

> At 9:07 a.m., one dispatcher, Eric Betts, responded to such a call. From the map on one of the seven monitors on his desk, he could see that the distress call originated from a slope at the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area. Mr. Betts tried calling back. A man picked up.

> “Do you have an emergency?” Mr. Betts asked. No, the man said, he was skiing — safely, happily, unharmed. Slightly annoyed, he added, “For the last three days, my watch has been dialing 911.”

> Winter has brought a decent amount of snowfall to the region’s ski resorts, and with it an avalanche of false emergency calls. Virtually all of them have been placed by Apple Watches or iPhone 14s under the mistaken impression that their owners have been debilitated in collisions.

> “My whole day is managing crash notifications,” said Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County’s emergency services, which received 185 such calls in the week from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22. (In winters past, the typical call volume on a busy day was roughly half that.) Ms. Dummer said that the onslaught was threatening to desensitize dispatchers and divert limited resources from true emergencies.

> Just before noon, Mark Watson, a sergeant with the sheriff’s office, walked into the dispatch room looking glum. “This is not a good day,” he said.

> Ordinarily, he had other duties, including patrolling the backcountry on snowmobile, but the ghost calls had kept him at his desk. Whenever the 911 operators were unable to reach the owner of the watch or phone, the case was referred to Sergeant Watson, who would try calling and sending a text; if he didn’t hear back, he forwarded the issue to the ski patrol.

> So far that day, Sergeant Watson had fielded seven referrals from 911, four of which he forwarded to the ski patrol. He turned to Ms. Dummer: How many crash-detection calls had come in overall? Eleven, she said, out of 30 calls total.

First off, if your watch has been repeatedly making false calls to 911 for three days then take off the watch or turn it off. You KNOW it is making bogus calls, after the first two or three it is time to start issuing fines.

Second, the obvious reaction is already happening:

> In Grand County, home to a busy mountain called Winter Park, Sheriff Brett Schroetlin decided in late December to devote less attention to the crash-detection calls. Now if a 911 operator receives one from the slopes and no one is on the other end of the line, they know to ignore the call; no more referrals or follow-ups. None of the ghost calls so far have been real emergencies, Sheriff Schroetlin reasoned, and he couldn’t afford to waste limited resources. Besides, he said, there was a better technology: human beings.

Had this problem with my old Galaxy Grand Prime. It had basically no form af anti-touch protection, and you could dial 911 from a single button on the lock screen. I believe it called 911 seven times while I had it. One time it called three times in the same day: one pocket dial, then two more redials via my Bluetooth speaker (most BT devices redial the last number if you press the call button, another terrible feature).

I assume you can turn off this feature, right. I'm not even black, and I'm scared of the cops and don't want them showing up unexpectedly.

Is the percentage of false detections astronomically low?

[removed]

I made sure I turned this feature off. As sad as it is to say, I’d rather limit my contact with any law enforcement officers.

I took a spill on my bmx with my Apple Watch on, and it detected the fall and it asked for a response from me.

[removed]

Exactly! Once I fell off my bike because the road was slippery. It was in the city on a regular road with cars driving by so of course the first thing I did after the fall was to get myself and the bike off the road asap and on the sidewalk. Then I noticed the haptic from AW on my wrist and was lucky I managed to cancel the fall detection alert within the time limit. It’s not enough…

You can turn it off when you are working out

By default it isn't turned on for fit, young people

They have very, very intricately designed mechanisms

After years and years of being Android (started Apple way back) I came back to Apple and was blown away by how fucking magical it all is

Software/hardware integration is unparalleled

The depth and thought of things like this feature, how you can choose to activate it and when, and how it had defaults based on age/activity/etc. - genius

Also saved a family member, elderly person fell and it called 911. They were able to say they'd be fine and no services needed, but it was a scare so the person stayed on the line with them. Amazing stuff.

*edit* realizing might be unrelated and about the newer crash detection features on some models of phone/watch/whatever it is, i was referring to fall detection

iirc it was under 5%, but I can't find the source again

I accidentally discovered the emergency alarm on my iPhone during church

Not on the ski slopes, apparently. The article says so far out of all these "ghost calls" auto-dials to 911 they got from an Apple Watch coming from the ski slopes, all of them have been accidental. It got so bad the manager had to tell his 911 operators to not worrying about calling back these numbers if it's from an Apple Watch & coming from the slopes, so that they could better focus on other real emergency calls.

> “It’s rare that someone falls on the mountain and there’s not a passer-by,” he said. “We’re hoping to get an actual 911 call from the person or someone on the scene.”

10 seconds? Sheesh I get the sense of urgency, but sometimes it takes me more than 10 seconds just to answer my phone in a non-emergency.

>They have very, very intricately designed mechanisms

omegalyl

Apple loves adding stupid bs stuff to justify the new products.

My iPhone uses a face scanner to unlock and a third of the time it can’t recognize my face and I have to enter a password anyway.

Everyday when I’m driving to or from work my gps is popping up with notifications telling me things I don’t need to know. If I left my house 5 minutes ago I’ll get a notification that I’m 5 minutes from my house.

If I connect to a Bluetooth speaker I’ll get notifications that my “headphones” are too loud and the volume is being lowered.

I miss my old iPhone and I miss being able to plug in wired headphones and not having to carry around a plastic box to keep my headphones charged or risk them falling out at work and getting dirty or lost

i lay in the powder and pretend im dead for at least 2 minutes

It would be as easy as allow to define some activities to disable the fall detection. Not a perfect solution but I would definitely welcome it.

Prank calling emergency services is illegal. Apple should be held accountable for the increase in resources required to accommodate this shit storm

I am a person who moves my hands around while talking. This feature is annoying! Lol!

I was driving one morning and my car alerted me that my trunk was open. I pulled over and slammed the trunk shut and my Apple Watch said it detected a fall. The hell?

It's easily disabled in Settings under Emergency SOS. These people with repeated calls are their own worst enemies.

This went off when my cousin fell down the stairs a couple months ago. They came and broke in through the back before his sister, who lives a couple blocks away, got there.

Something is wrong with your iPhone. Mine is spot on with just about everything.

It knows based on car it connects to where I'm going. If it's a my truck it knows I'm going to CVS, tells me how long it will take and after CVS it tells me how long it will take to work.

If I'm in my M4, it knows I'm going to gym or depending on date if I'm going to the park and which one. Gives me notifications.

Know each day when I go to bed, since every day is different.

Mine does not lower headsets or change volume and my face lock works 9/10 times, even with sunglasses and hat.

It's actually kinda creepy that it's so spot on.

It definitely shouldn’t go off unless you are swinging very hard

Who said it was prank calling?

Seems like you need to fix your settings

What?

Why is it sad? Was your dad a policeman whose ghost cannot sleep until you make friends with a police officer? Are you an informant that has lost his handler and Matt Damon deleted your undercover file? Why it sad!?

The watch thinks the person is in danger. Just needs some updated software.

I know, but that doesn’t mean it is prank calling

Right?

My girlfriend put after market trims on her new IPhone & it kept calling 911. Found out 1 of the little button covers was too tight on the trim. Popped it off of the trims & solved the problem.