By Howdy Jan 30, 2023
Tech
The iPhone 14 was advertised as having a feature called "Crash Detection," which would call the police if the phone sensed that the user had been in a severe car accident. But since the phones came out, we've heard about hotspots that aren't there.
Every wrong call puts too much stress on the emergency services in the area. In this latest case, the Kita-Alps, Nagano, Japan fire department said it got 134 false calls between December 16 and January 23. "Most" of these calls came from iPhone 14 Crash Detection systems
During that month, the Japanese emergency services unit got 919 calls, so the 100 false calls caused by the iPhone Crash Detection feature were more than a tenth of their work.
This is likely because these activities' high speeds and impacts make it easy for the algorithms to mistake them for driving and car crashes.
When the iPhone thinks a crash has happened, it starts a countdown (with a loud warning siren) on the user's device before making an automatic call to emergency services. The user can stop the process at any time.
But if the user is doing something busy, like riding a roller coaster or skiing, they might not hear the siren and won't know what's happening, so keep the call from going through.
At the end of December, the release notes for iOS 16.1.2 said that the company had "optimized crash detection on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models."
Most people should leave this feature turned on, but if you want to turn it off, go to Settings > Emergency SOS > Call After Serious Crash and turn off the toggle.
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