Apple’s new iPhone 14 comes with a very interesting feature: Crash Detection. The feature is also available in the new Apple Watch and is meant to be triggered in the event of a car crash to call emergency services in the event that the person is unable to.
Apple stated that Crash Detection should only work if you’re driving and you experience a crash, so not just anything should be able to trigger it.
However, it looks like some false triggers have been reported on roller coasters.
In a report by the Wall Street Journal, iPhone 14s have been calling 911 in several amusement parks in the United States. These include Kings Island in Ohio, Six Flags, and more. Several times, the phones put out calls to emergency services, but roller coaster goers couldn’t do anything until the ride came to a stop.
It’s likely that the Crash Detection was triggered by extreme speed-ups and slow-downs that are present in roller coaster rides. It seems like these abrupt movements tricked the phone’s sensors into believing a crash has occurred.
A spokesperson for Apple told the WSJ that the feature’s algorithms were validated using “over a million hours of crash data” and that the feature is “extremely accurate in detecting severe crashes.” Apple will still improve the feature over time, the spokesperson added.
Despite this, the Crash Detection feature has been doing its job and it has helped alert emergency services to proper crashes. However, false calls like this can be detrimental, as they take away emergency services from genuine emergencies unknowingly.
The problem is still present, so you can probably avoid taking your phone on a roller coaster to prevent this situation from happening to you. If you have to take your phone, however, just keep it in airplane mode or shut it off until the ride is over so that it can’t make a call like this.
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