Article: iPhone 14 might call emergency services when on a rollercoaster

scottypippin said:
Not typically a fan of The Verge, but this was too good to pass up:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/9/...ling-911-rollercoasters-apple-crash-detection

The article seems to imply this is also a feature on an Apple Watch, and that it could call emergency services if the watch was connected to cell or wifi data. Anyone with an Apple Watch wanna try?
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It is a feature on both devices.

The irony is that Pixel phones have had problems calling 911. I know this is childish and not really true, but it seems apropos that Google's problem is with making things work at all, while Apple's is that its tech works too well.
 
Aurelius said:
It is a feature on both devices.

The irony is that Pixel phones have had problems calling 911. I know this is childish and not really true, but it seems apropos that Google's problem is with making things work at all, while Apple's is that its tech works too well.
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And you can at least work around the Apple feature by putting the phone in airplane mode.
I feel Google's pain with their 911 problems, I was struggling with 911 issues in our remote buildings when using the VOIP landlines and it issuing the wrong address to the call. Eventually just gave up and replaced the phone system, we determined it was too large a liability, friken Mitel...
 
Its a problem on my phone as well. Double anything that has tap to unlock enables.

Since the emergency numbers can be accessed off the lock screen without a password it makes it feasible to call the numbers when your phone is going off in your pocket.
 
Apple has just responded, "Clearly the phone works as designed. It's correctly identified the user entered a reality distortion field and is in urgent need of emergency services." :D
 
Meh. A perfectly fine idea with a few teething issues. All it needs is a little finessing to dial it in.

  • Geofence off areas with repeat false-positives.
  • Use the data that is no-doubt collected around incidents to refine the trigger conditions.
  • Expand the window between incident and call a bit -- maybe to a minute, or thereabouts.

I fully expect Tim Apple is already considering these, because he and his fellow C-levels who are running this multibillion-dollar multinational corporation are not fucking morons.
 
XenIneX said:
Meh. A perfectly fine idea with a few teething issues. All it needs is a little finessing to dial it in.

  • Geofence off areas with repeat false-positives.
  • Use the data that is no-doubt collected around incidents to refine the trigger conditions.
  • Expand the window between incident and call a bit -- maybe to a minute, or thereabouts.

I fully expect Tim Apple is already considering these, because he and his fellow C-levels who are running this multibillion-dollar multinational corporation are not fucking morons.
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Add in vertical changes to the list. You aren't usually in a car accident going up and down and back up 50 feet. Driving up a mountain and falling off maybe, roll it down a ravine and launch again but still. Repeatedly having side to side g-force swaps too. Even in a car pileup you will get diminished forces as the pileup grows. I'm sure dispatch needs 50 iwatches calling in at once lol.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm sure an ekg looks very different between a Rollercoaster and car accident too. Heart rate alone, sure they'll both be elevated but still. Idk if iwatches do ekg, my old Samsung does or tries to.

Do we really need automated 911 calls if the persons heart is still beating? Sure automate it if they are going into arrest or 0bpm after a hard g-force, but if it's in a normal or high range..? It's unlikely that everyone involved in said hypothetical incident would be incapacitated and an accident where you are hit hard enough to be incapacitated usually has witnesses calling in anyway.
 
Aurelius said:
It is a feature on both devices.

The irony is that Pixel phones have had problems calling 911. I know this is childish and not really true, but it seems apropos that Google's problem is with making things work at all, while Apple's is that its tech works too well.
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yikes.

And I hadn't heard about the other incident earlier last year with MS teams blocking 911 - that'd be a shocker too. "Hey Google, call 911" - "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. The Microsoft Family wants you dead."

yeah I share your sentiment regarding the two companies, though not a rule of thumb. One seems to want to do everything for you, while the other can seem like they want you to do everythig for them sometimes.
 
Aurelius said:
It is a feature on both devices.

The irony is that Pixel phones have had problems calling 911. I know this is childish and not really true, but it seems apropos that Google's problem is with making things work at all, while Apple's is that its tech works too well.
Click to expand...

I recently saw a Reddit thread where people couldn't even deliberately call 911 from their Pixel 6 phone. The phone would just throw some error without even trying to call out, even after rebooting the phone. The person had to run to another person nearby to use their phone in an actual emergency. That seems like lawsuit territory to me.
 
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T4rd said:
I recently saw a Reddit thread where people couldn't even deliberately call 911 from their Pixel 7 phone. The phone would just throw some error without even trying to call out, even after rebooting the phone. The person had to run to another person nearby to use their phone in an actual emergency. That seems like lawsuit territory to me.
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Definitely a lawsuit in the making... imagine if you were out in the woods and didn't have someone else around to help! I'm sure Google has been scrambling to get this fixed, but you'd think "can reliably call 911" would be an important testing item.
 
Sorry to bump this.. but I have two related stories -- one happened today.

Today - my wife's Pixel 6a got stuck in accessibility mode where it reads every part of the screen to you and makes you tap/confirm everything. I was just going to reboot the phone to see if I could clear it, so I held down the power button. It brought up the new android power menu, for which the first option is emergency/911 auto dial, in which it proceeded to select. Since accessibility mode was on, it would not let me cancel out of it, so it dialed 911. Luckily I was able to double/triple tap the screen fast enough (I think) once it started to ring 911. (couldn't slide the cancelation selector in accessiblity mode) So hopefully, the cops don't show up at my house soon.

Last summer -- I was hiking on Lake Superior and went to take a picture of my wife and son when I dropped my Pixel 3a on the ground from waist pocket height. It proceeded to repeatedly call 911 all on its own with no user intervention and I couldn't cancel out of it. I had to hold the power button for like 30 seconds to restart the phone. Luckily I had no service, so nothing happened.
 
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w1retap said:
so it dialed 911.
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Having accidentally dialled 911 before once[1], I can tell you--if the call connects, don't hang up. They'll just call you back, just in case. If you can answer the call at all, just apologize and tell them your phone freaked out and you didn't mean to call them. Barring some situation where you get a jerk of a dispatcher or you call in when the local center is overloaded, they'll understand.

[1] it turns out that after that stupid meme telling people in the US to call 112 or whatever the European number is in an emergency instead of 911 (who knows why) that calling that number will redirect to 911. Oops.
 
I must have hung up before it went through. Never got a call back or an officer on scene lol
 
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