It doesn’t appear that Android has a monopoly on making accidental calls to emergency contact numbers. Recently we told you that in the U.K., the cops are asking Android users to disable the Emergency SOS feature that automatically calls the emergency contact number (which is 999 in that region of the world) whenever the power button is quickly pressed five times in succession.
Apple’s Crash Detection is responsible for a 5 times increase in the number of false 911 calls at a music festival
The National Police Chiefs Council in the U.K. said, “Nationally, all emergency services are currently experiencing record-high 999 call volumes. There are a few reasons for this, but one we think is having a significant impact is an update to Android smartphones.” Interestingly, it was recently learned that the huge “Super Update” coming to the Samsung Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22 lines, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 will prevent those phones and others from disabling Emergency SOS.
Now we switch to the iOS side where the feature found on the iPhone 14 series and the Apple Watch known as Crash Detection caused a ruckus last week at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. When Crash Detection detects that a crash has occurred, the phone and watch will sound an alarm and the screen will display an alert. The phone will read the alert and if you have just the iPhone, there will be a slider to swipe in order for an emergency call to be made.
If you have your Apple Watch only, when a crash is detected the timepiece will sound an alarm, tap your wrist, and will display a slider to swipe to make an emergency call. If you have both the iPhone and the Apple Watch, the slider appears on the watch only while the phone will call emergency services. If you’re unable to respond, after 20- seconds your device will call emergency services. The call says that you’ve been in a severe accident and shares your location with the dispatcher.
Crash Detection is available on all four iPhone 14 series models, Apple Watch SE (second generation), Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch Ultra. And the feature is being blamed for a 5x increase in the number of false 911 calls reported at the Bonnaroo music festival held last weekend in Manchester, Tennessee. The event drew more than 80,000 attendees and the size of the crowd alone could have made it a challenge for emergency services to respond to each call promptly.
However, Nashville television station WKRN cited Director of Coffee County 911 Communication Center Scott LeDuc who said that the false alarms did not impact the ability of first responders to respond to real-life emergencies. “Our employees really stepped up, as first responders always do really step up in the line of duty and they did,” LeDuc said. “And we didn’t have any situation where we couldn’t help someone because of the amount of calls.”
Dancing might have set off the false alarms
So what set off the Crash Detection feature on the iPhone and Apple Watch? It’s believed that the false alarms were triggered when attendees were dancing to the live performances during the festival. LeDuc tried to reduce the number of false alarms by sending out alerts to iPhone and Apple Watch users in the area asking them to disable the Crash Detection feature. He said that the alerts were successful and reduced the number of accidental 911 calls by 40% to 60%.
LeDuc said that Apple offered to send a team to Coffee County to help but the Director said that he was able to figure out what the issue was after speaking to the company over the phone. He stated that “If somebody dials 911, we have to answer the phone and we have to make sure that we go through all the protocols to make sure that everybody’s safe before we close out that call.”
Coffee County was able to track down the person behind each accidental 911 call to verify that they were false alarms. The county has been working with Wilson County which is hosting Sunday’s Ally 400 NASCAR race in Lebanon, Tennessee to make sure that the issue doesn’t repeat itself during the sporting event.
