Apple’s iPhone 14 (with iOS 16) features an option called “crash detection” that offers a level of automated assistance for when users might have been involved in a crash within their vehicle. Sensors within the phone detect the occurrence of a crash and then attempts to contact emergency services for help.
If a user doesn’t stop it, emergency services are notified of the exact location so they can respond quickly. It really is a neat feature and it can potentially save a lot of lives. However, it apparently has some real-world kinks to work out. One of those is false alerts.
So what could end up causing a false alert? Apparently, roller coasters. Emergency services have been getting alerts from iPhone 14 users having fun at amusement parks. The motions triggered by the coasters wind up triggering the crash detection feature and thus the alert going on. Since they aren’t expecting this, they may not notice the phone doing this in their pocket.
Meanwhile, emergency services are having to weed through these false alerts in order to not miss any true emergencies. So although the feature is absolutely a great idea, in theory, Apple still has some ironing out to do so that it isn’t causing call congestion (or worse).
This also raises questions in regard to the ride comfort of some of these coasters. Either the iPhone feature is a little overly sensitive or there is likely a large number of headaches being experienced by ticket holders.
