Roller coaster rides have been incorrectly triggering the crash detection feature on the new iPhone 14 and Apple Watch models. This has been causing 911 calls, as per a report by WSJ.
PSA: disable crash detection on iPhone 14 and Apple Watch before roller coaster rides
Joanna Stern from WSJ writes in a new article that there have been multiple occasions in the United States where iPhone 14 and Apple Watch have inaccurately detected a crash during roller coaster rides and called emergency services. This resulted in teams being sent to the location only to find out that it was a false alarm.
The Warren County Communications Center provided me with recordings of six iPhone crash-detection calls from people at Kings Island rides, all received since the new iPhone 14 models went on sale in September. Similar alerts have been triggered by the Joker roller coaster at Six Flags Great America near Chicago.
Users have also reported that iPhone 14 crash detection made 911 calls when the phones were dropped in a car during driving.
Crash Detection is one of the highlight features of the new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch Ultra models. It uses a combination of hardware sensors and software algorithms to detect when there is an accident. Although Apple has claimed that it has used 1 million hours of real-world driving and crash data to train the algorithms, it is expected that the company will continue to work on it and improve it further.
In user testing so far with dummy car crashes, it has been confirmed that crash detection works well on both iPhone and Apple Watch.
Apple says that signs of a crash can include rapid deceleration or a sudden stop, both of which are usual on roller coaster rides. It will be interesting to see how Apple plans to tackle such scenarios in future software updates.
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