Apple's Crash Detection feature on iPhone 14 perceives some roller coaster rides in amusement parks as a severe car crash and proceeds to call 911.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), there have been several incidents where an iPhone 14 has contacted 911 during a roller coaster ride and conveyed the message "The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone."
The crash detection system was introduced in the new iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Series 8, Ultra, and SE with the latest OS earlier this year.
Between September 18 and October 9, the Warren County Communications Center received 12 calls conveyed by iPhones while their users were riding a Kings Island coaster, stated Melissa Bour, director of Warren County emergency services.
Roller coaster riders have also described instances where the crash detection feature has been triggered because phones were dropped while their vehicle was moving.
“I was on a motorcycle ride today and my new iPhone 14 pro flew off my handlebars on the highway. RIP. I immediately drove to apple to get a new temp phone sorted. Meanwhile, my whole family thought I was dead. The iPhone 14 sent out crash alerts to my circle,” Douglas Sonders tweeted.
According to Sara White, a 39-year-old dentist, her iPhone automatically contacted 911 when she went to Mystic Timbers at Kings Island. The wooden roller coaster is 109 feet tall with top speeds of 53 mph.
“The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone,” an automated voice says in the call to 911, before also providing longitude and latitude coordinates. Screams from others on the ride can be heard in the background of the call.
Warren County Emergency Services set up a text message alert system earlier this year to help individuals who were injured in a road accident. The feature wasn’t designed to help with calls triggered by “crash detection.”
“It's saying that there's a crash that's been detected, so that's a little different than the 911 hang ups or silences,” Bour added. “So we make up a call for a crash with unknown injuries, because we haven't spoken to anyone, and then once that call is made up, it gets dispatched out to the police officer.”
The crash detection feature has the potential to save a lot of lives, but wasting the time of emergency workers could also backfire. We also need to consider how new the iPhone 14 is, meaning this problem is only set to get worse as millions more handsets are purchased over the coming months.
The tech giant may roll out an update in the near future to differentiate a roller coaster from a car crash, but in the meantime, iPhone owners are recommended to put their iPhone 14 on Airplane Mode or disable Crash Detection before getting on the coaster (Settings -> Emergency SOS -> Call After Severe Crash toggle).