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My iPhone 14 Fell Off My Motorcycle and Told My Family I Crashed
- tjwds 4y ago(n.b. that I am not the author, the "I" in the title is Douglas Sonders, not me)
- htk 4y ago"Hey, look! In this case the feature was mistaken!"
- ronsor 4y agoPersonally I think it's working as intended.
- dymk 4y agoNot sure what the author expects the right behavior would be here. Or what the point of the article is. Author was riding on a motorcycle with the feature enabled, and dropped his phone in a way that was indistinguishable from a crash (which he admits). The author even says he's grateful the feature exists. But then says "But surely there's a better way of detecting real crashes". Okay? What do he think that might be? No suggestions are made at all.
- geenew 4y agoHe does say 'Wouldn’t you think you’d get a notification on your Apple Watch, allowing you to dismiss the crash alert'. Notification on the watch is a reasonable and safe change. I wonder too whether a filter could be applied for situations where the phone detects massive acceleration, but the watch does not. It's hard to imagine a scenario where 1) a crash occurs, 2) the phone imu detects it, but 3) the watch imu do not.
- dymk 4y agoThe phone is a quarter mile away where he dropped it. No watch connectivity.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThere was connectivity at the time of dropping. And the phone should have been made to detect whether it is on or off the bike, anyways.
- Jtsummers 4y agoHow? In a crash it won't necessarily be on the bike anymore anyways.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThe phone will receive a very strong acceleration before being thrown off the bike. In this case, the phone is being disconnected from the bike while receiving a small amount of force, and then hitting the ground with great force. EDIT: In a one vehicle accident where the driver lowsides onto gravel, the phone will receive a lot of forces as the bike deccelerates or tumbles, and this force will start when the phone is still attached to the bike.
- Jtsummers 4y agoAnd how different will it be from what happened here? Will it be substantially different versus a one-vehicle accident where the driver spills on a gravel road?
- dymk 4y agoHow would the phone possibly distinguish that from the rider being thrown from the motorcycle in a true-positive scenario?
- sudosysgen 4y ago
- sudosysgen 4y agoThere is definitely a better way to do so. You can use a magent with a force sensor to detect when the phone is against a metal surface, and only trigger the crash detection if there is sizeable force before the phone detaches from the vehicle. Then Apple would actually be justified in locking this feature to some models, as if normal accelerometers didn't already go to 16G+ :) EDIT: I feel like I may have been unclear. I'm saying the phone should detect if it's being detached from the bike before or after the crash, using a magnetic sensor preferably (since Apple already has their magnetic attachement thing). If the phone is disconnected from the vehicle before it senses a crash, then it's a false positive. If the phone is disconnected at the same time, or less than a certain before sensing a very strong shock, then this is a true positive.
- ec109685 4y agoThis is getting silly. Phone gets thrown out of a crashed car, it should let loved ones know rather than not because it didn’t land in metal.
- shawnz 4y agoWhy is it the author's problem to develop a better system? Is it not valuable to remind fellow users of the caveats of using the feature and provide examples of possible failure modes that might not be immediately obvious?
- dymk 4y ago“I left my phone in a crash test dummy’s pocket and it alerted my family, why hasn’t Apple fixed this corner case?” — latest article headline from this author
- 627467 4y agoWhy corporate apologism? We are talking about a trillion dollar company that just publicly unvealed a new feature that has shortcomings: do we need anymore justification to voice the shortcoming and hope that trillion dollar worth of resources may improve the feature? [Edit] to clarify: trillion dollar company or not, a new feature was just released a someone noticed what seems to be an edge case where does feature isn't providing value. Feedback is good.
- kaba0 4y agoPhysics won’t stop working for any trillions of dollars.
- rich_sasha 4y agoDisplay a notification asking user to confirm if they died?
- albertopv 4y agoVehicle crash detection devices existed for years. Yes, you have to install it, but you can't forget them at home, don't send an alarm if your phone falls and can call emergency services automatically, so nothing new.
- takanori 4y agoClassic IRL product scenario, not accounted for while building the happy path
- smt88 4y agoThat's not at all what happened here. It isn't possible for crash detection to differentiate between "phone falls off bike" and "bike crashed" because everything that happens to the phone could be identical in both scenarios. If the phone is loose in a pocket (or even in a backpack) when the bike crashes, it can easily hit the ground, bounce, and then come to a stop... just like it does if it falls out off the bike in any non-crash scenario.
- flat-pluto 4y ago"I know false-alarms like mine will be rare, and the potential life-saving benefit far outweighs the inconvenience of my particular situation. But there has to be a better way to distinguish genuine crashes from phone-smashing mishaps." Just want to stress that training an ML model is going to be really difficult for this scenario, and false positives are to be expected. It isn't like this was unexpected either given that "the phone flew off its handlebar mount".
- vlunkr 4y agoHonestly, what is the best case scenario for this feature? Sure, text the police, that’s a great idea, but why give your family extreme anxiety with very little information? What are they supposed to do, rush to the scene of the accident? There’s nothing you can do when you get that text but wonder if they’ve died.
- zippergz 4y agoI'd argue that if you're concerned about your family worrying, you probably should reconsider riding motorcycles.
- vlunkr 4y agoI don’t ride motorcycles for that reason, but this feature applies to cars to. I can’t opt out of those too easily.
- kaba0 4y agoYou can text them immediately to know you are fine. Nonetheless, this sort of false sensitive is very unlikely with cars, and chances are you overestimate your well-being in a car crash due to adrenaline, so even then it may be good to have your family look after you more than they would otherwise.
- aaron695 4y ago
- webmobdev 4y agoThis is a good example of an unanticipated or rare scenario that nobody would have realistically considered when developing and adding a feature. The author's suggestion of displaying an alert on an Apple Watch to seek confirmation is a good idea, and will certainly appeal to Apple sales philosophy of integrating services to sell other device. :)
- School-Cotton 4y agoIt’s insane that it’s legal to have a dash-mounted cell phone in view while operating a motorcycle.
- tjbiddle 4y agoNavigation purposes? I keep procrastinating putting a mount on my bike, so now every time I go out for a drive I need to pull over, take my phone out of my pocket, check to make sure I didn't miss the turn (50/50 chance), put it back in, and get going again - only to repeat the process whenever I feel lost again.
- LN_is_a_scam 4y ago
- reustle 4y agoIs it any different than while driving a car? I have (rigidly) mounted my phone to my handlebars for the past 15 years, seems to be fine.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoThe most amazing thing about the story is that the iPhone was ripped from its adhesive mount by a bump, flew off the motorcycle, presumable struck the concrete road at 60 miles per hour, and still had enough functionality to activate the emergency crash detection and find and text contacts marked as family! That is amazing!
- jshzglr 4y agoBetter safe than sorry? This hardly seems like an issue. People’s iPhones aren’t generally going to be falling going 60+ mph. Nice fodder for an article however.
- refracture 4y agoHere's the fix: Secure your hardware. It's not Apple's problem if you do a poor job. He even stated his belief that the adhesive wouldn't be up to the task.. and he was right. Apple doesn't even particularly recommend what he's doing anyway: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212803 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212803 Edit: to be fair that's an electric motorcycle so that's not too fair a statement.
- kornhole 4y agoB Franklin said that someone who is willing to give up freedom for security deserves neither. This rider didn't get the security for which he surrendered his freedom and got worse.
- beej71 4y agoDon't use this feature with a handlebar mount, I think is the lesson. I suspect 99% of these reports are going to be dropped phones and police will learn to ignore them.