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I think one of the things that other posters are alluding to is that the phone can experience very significant forces if you are dancing, especially if it is be

I think one of the things that other posters are alluding to is that the phone can experience very significant forces if you are dancing, especially if it is being held in something like a purse or other bag that's flying around wildly as you dance (or if the phone is dropped). I'm pretty sure that if I threw my phone in a bag and caught it by the strap, it would experience far more G force than in any ordinary car crash, and if it is surrounded by screaming and general chaos, I think it's making a fairly understandable decision. The sensor fusion algorithms get confused by this, and the phone decides to call 911. It displays a notification for 10 seconds, then it starts a further 10 second countdown where it buzzes at maximum power and plays a siren noise at maximum volume. Under normal circumstances a reasonable person would notice these very loud alerts, and cancel the call. In a festival scenario where the users are deafened by other noises and possibly drunk/high, you might not notice. The phone then makes a call to 911. How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? Where would you personally choose to calibrate the false positive/false negative rate? These are hard design choices, and there will always be incorrect detections with any automated system like this.

recursive 3y ago
> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? I'd put it in the car. Make it use the same sensor as airbag deployment.
- noodlesUK 3y ago
  I think that's probably the best way to do something like this, but it certainly won't have the reach of putting the feature in people's phones. Only newer cars with the feature would be able to make the call. I think it would make sense to require some feature like this as part of the standard safety equipment on a new car. I'm pretty sure that this iPhone feature has and will save lives, and it may also risk them due to resource mismanagement.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    > ... but it certainly won't have the reach of putting the feature in people's phones. I think this may be another job for Bayes. Apple's algorithm may be very accurate at detecting car crashes when there are car crashes, but most of the time there are not car crashes. As a result it may actually be super inaccurate at the 'population' level. So while it may have the reach, the incidence of false positives and the infrastructure misallocation may yield worse outcomes than not having the system in the first place.
    - noodlesUK 3y ago
      > I think this may be another job for Bayes. Definitely. I think it is difficult to assess the scale of the issue here without any raw numbers. In terms of resource allocation, this quote in the article seems to suggest that they weren't so stretched thin that they had any issues. >Our employees really stepped up, as first responders always do really step up in the line of duty and they did. And we didn’t have any situation where we couldn’t help someone because of the amount of calls.
    - raverbashing 3y ago
      Yeah at some point Apple will have to make the calculation actual lives saved vs. useless dispatches of emergency services A good individual idea not always turns out to be great when taken at a population level
      - alvarezbjm-hn 3y ago
        Is apple paying for the false alarms? I assume they aren't (They aren't in the saving lives bussiness) I suppose they have no motive for this: "Apple will have to make the calculation actual lives saved vs. useless dispatches"
  - bombolo 3y ago
    Do you think most car owners in the world have a functioning new iphone with them at all times while in the car?
  - 3y ago
- babyshake 3y ago
  You can keep it in the phone, but use phone GPS to detect that a crash-like event correlates to something that looks like a crash from recent GPS data. That should reduce the false positives.
  - mh- 3y ago
    Phones don't keep a GPS fix in the background 24/7. This would be prohibitively expensive, battery-wise. iPhones do have approximate location available at all times, via wi-fi scanning/databases and tower ~triangulation. This wouldn't be good enough to infer any sort of acute acceleration/deceleration. All of that said, none of it helps if you were sitting at a red light for 3 minutes before being rear-ended.
- cauthon 3y ago
  The automatic detection and activation of "driving focus" in iOS has been extremely accurate in my experience. Seems like it'd be easiest to simply filter out "car crashes" when the phone isn't associated with a "driving" state.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    On the other hand my iOS phone has never activated driving focus even when I'm driving. I suspect that's because I never connected my phone to the car over Bluetooth.
    - hermitdev 3y ago
      FWIW, my wife's iphone turns on driving mode while a passenger in my car, even though her phone is not paired to my car at all.
    - cauthon 3y ago
      I don't have bluetooth in my car. Going over about 10-15 mph seems to trigger it.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      There’s a setting to switch between speed or connection to a car as criteria.
- taeric 3y ago
  And then it would be worthless for hikers, bikers, elderly.... This is, all told, a fairly useful feature that has historically been accomplished only with dedicated hardware. Such that I'm surprised at all of the indignation here. I remember when the watch came out, that there were many stories on how it had helped folks. Seems a straight line from those to false positives. There are probably also false negatives, such that the feature has work to do in both directions.
  - TremendousJudge 3y ago
    That's moving the goalposts? If the feature is for "car crashes" it's reasonable to put it int he car. A generic "this person had some sort of accident" is a much broader specification and much harder to manage all the edge cases for.
    - taeric 3y ago
      It is crash detection. It has saved some biker's lives.
      - TremendousJudge 3y ago
        I'm not saying it's not valuable, I'm saying that without building a more specialized system you will never be able to filter a good chunk of false positives. And it's not great to have false calls on the emergency system, since it makes it worse for everyone.
  - virtue3 3y ago
    You are massively underestimating the strain and resources expended for false positives for emergency services. This will be a major issue for municipalities. And it won't be apple footing the bill it will be your local tax dollars at work. Put another way; if an emergency team arrives late to another accident because they were tied up on a false positive from an iphone and that results in less effective care, what happens? Do we just front the bill for more emergency workers? Do we hold apple accountable for false positives? Do we hold the user accountable for false positives (I guarantee most people are gonna start turning it off then). Seems like emergency response centers are a little mixed in how they feel about the feature. But this last point is especially important as to why false positives are pretty irresponsible. "An automated call from Crash Detection could cost responders as much as $10,000, and they have a limited budget." https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/09/apple-crash-detection-now-causing-problems-in-minnesota https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/09/apple-crash-detec...
- aksss 3y ago
  My 2012 F150 behaves this way (supposedly) - the truck will try to call 911 using your BT-connected phone in the event of a crash. I’ve assumed that’s how GM cars with Onstar worked too, using their built in cell connection.
mattnewton 3y ago
> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? I wouldn’t - it’s not clear to me this feature is saving lives. Why not incorporate it into the car?
- cutemonster 3y ago
  Apple can't decide to do that? And if they cooperated with a manufacturer, that'd affect only its future cars, few compared to everyone with an iPhone. And that'd sell more cars not more iPhones
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    I know apple can’t easily decide to do that, but they can decide to _not_ do this with such a high false positive rate. I don’t think selling iPhones is a universal good (even as an aapl shareholder). Selling aftermarket car sensors or whatever if they really wanted to be in the market for this makes sense to me. But, I haven’t seen a good source on how frequently the false positive trigger versus real calls where the caller was unlikely to place it themselves. I could be totally wrong.
    - unshavedyak 3y ago
      I wonder what the watch false positives are like, too. I was playing with my dog and my watch tried to call 911 thinking I fell. Seems a bit excessive to me. Especially since I’m not over 80 years or or whatever.
      - FinnKuhn 3y ago
        Maybe, but in most circumstances where you don't need help you will notice the call and can cancel it in time.
samuellavoie90 3y ago
Shouldn't a system like that be part of the car, not the phone? Trying to force a feature to exist outside of the context where it makes sense can only lead to issues in my opinion.
- bitcurious 3y ago
  The average age of a car in the states is 12.5 years. Mandating the tech in cars means that only a small fraction of comparatively well off Americans will benefit from crash detection. Rolling it out in smartphones democratizes this safety feature to a great extent. Plus, there are pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, etc., who can crash.
  - recursive 3y ago
    Seatbelts were mandated some time ago. This was done even though most cars were old. Then, time passed. Now, all cars have seat belts. Most crashes have at least one car involved.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    Do we have evidence that this feature is actually providing benefit? So much so that we as a society can't possibly wait 10 years for it to be ubiquitous in cars? Was it common before to get in a serious accident but nobody calls 911? If a call goes through when there was a legitimate accident, do the 911 operators even care, or do they assume all these automated calls are false positives? I think it's likely that this feature does more harm than good by ddosing the 911 infrastructure.
    - taeric 3y ago
      Per the story, it didn't overwhelm them. It caused an increase, but they were able to field all calls. Such that you would need something other than this to show it caused actual harm. You also don't have to search too hard to see that it has, in fact, been useful. First news search I found: https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/15/police-officer-apple-watch-fall-detection/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/15/police-officer-apple-watch-fa... I see no reason to think there aren't others.
sowbug 3y ago
I'd filter cases where the phone wasn't previously traveling fast enough for the holder to have been in a vehicle, and cases where the phone wasn't near a road. This would require AGPS rather than just the less power-hungry IMU, but maybe that's the price for not DDOSing 911 infrastructure.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
  Yeah, atleast try to categorize what activity is going on and filter on those.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Or, is this at an isolated area? Useless to activate 'crash-mode' in a crowded area
  - jamwil 3y ago
    I think this gets at a logical algorithmic improvement. I assume they use aggregate location data for things like real-time traffic. There’s no need for these alerts to trigger if there is a critical mass of iPhones near the ‘incident’.
Calavar 3y ago
The solution is to move the system to the car. Cell phones are the wrong tool for the problem. Rollout will be much slower on the automotive side, but this can be addressed if we legistlate such systems up from luxury safety features to mandatory ones. Just like what we did in the past for airbags, automatic antilock braking, etc.
megous 3y ago
> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? It's already done and mandated. Why design something new? https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-emergencies/emergency-assistance-vehicles-ecall/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...
brundolf 3y ago
This feels like such an obvious failure-mode that I just assumed when they announced it that it would be smarter- incorporating different sensors, factoring in the exact way it tumbles, etc. If it really is just absolute acceleration, the false-positives are no surprise
tzs 3y ago
> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? If significant motion does not stop shortly after a candidate crash is identified then reject the candidate as a false positive. Maybe also listen for voices. If you can detect people talking and they seem to be reasonably coherent that suggests that even if there was a crash there are people on site already who can take care of summoning emergency services if needed.
ecuaflo 3y ago
Apple maps automatically pops up with directions to home when I connect to my 2008 car’s bluetooth. I’d just enable it when connected to a vehicle’s bluetooth. Or if the phone continually collects sensor data already for this feature, I’d just make sure the second preceding the supposed crash was consistent with traveling in a vehicle, not being in the same place. It won’t work when you are hit by something though in that case.
- ecuaflo 3y ago
  Third option: only call 911 if there is no movement after the supposed crash.
mejutoco 3y ago
Light sensor. If the phone is in a handbag, there will hardly be any light. If it is in a car or flies away some amount of light would be perceptible by the sensors. Or just disable this feature. We got along ok before without it. First, do no harm.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  Plenty of people leave their phone in their pocket/bag while they’re in the car.
  - mejutoco 3y ago
    Of course you are right. It won't work with them then. This feature can never work 100%. The point is to have less false positives. Maybe the feature should ask the user: where do you put the phone normally? handbag, pocket; where while driving? while riding a bike? and the software would use sound, light sensors, based on the answers, etc. Otherwise simply stop this feature, since it is more trouble than it is worth it.
    - plewd 3y ago
      Surely a false positive is better than a false negative right? Having such restrictive requirements for the call to activate seems like it'd do more harm than good.
      - mejutoco 3y ago
        I think exactly the opposite. Having all those fake calls is the harm. Not having this service is the default, so unless it provides a lot of accuracy it should not be implemented. Worst case is real human calls start getting ignored or the response is delayed because of the noise of all these fake calls. This is a serious public safety issue, and it should not be up to a company to decide if they collapse it to sell more phones.
RC_ITR 3y ago
'This is an automated call from an iPhone that has detected a crash without user input. The current coordinates of the phone are XXX" Pretty easy to filter all the car crashes coming from a grassy lawn somewhere.
croshan 3y ago
> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? If you want to prevent false positives—then, same as you’ve described, but only enable when either: - phone is connected to Carplay via USB or bluetooth - phone is connected to a bluetooth device known to be an auto (inferred by manufacturer ID, and configurable in bluetooth settings) - GPS data for the last 5 minutes indicate you’re driving And display an indicator on lockscreen that shows this feature is enabled. Of course, consider that the downside of false positives don’t affect consumers or manufacturers—rather, they affect public utilities. Then, it’s easy to understand why this happens.
activiation 3y ago
Very funny... It should be very easy to determine if it was going 15mph+ on the road before the "crash" though ... Apple is just fucking dumb
rz2k 3y ago
I think it’s possible that the noise levels at a festival resemble the very loud noise of a car crash on some level, and that is part of the equation in triggering the crash detection. If it were g-forces alone that are confusing the phone there might be more stories about fall detection rather than just car crash detection. Even though the age cohort at festivals might be less likely to explicitly enable fall detection, I think it’s a default setting.
rtkwe 3y ago
They could build some better logic to determine how likely it is the phone is in a car at the moment and specifically for this kind of situation build longer baselines to determine if the user is likely to have heard the warning that the phone has determined it might have sensed a crash. The first option seems like it would solve a number of similar issues as well.
DropInIn 3y ago
Maybe the phone just shouldn't at all and if people want such a feature they can purchase an accessory for their vehicle... Really, this is effectively criminal under the statute iiuc
adriancr 3y ago
> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? Keep state for a longer period of time. Activate when you start driving and deactivate when parking. Start could be triggered by gps detecting movement over longer period of time over roads. That would avoid festival where you're stationary in a place where cars arent allowed. Problem here is solved.

recursive 3y ago

> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? I'd put it in the car. Make it use the same sensor as airbag deployment.

noodlesUK 3y ago
I think that's probably the best way to do something like this, but it certainly won't have the reach of putting the feature in people's phones. Only newer cars with the feature would be able to make the call. I think it would make sense to require some feature like this as part of the standard safety equipment on a new car. I'm pretty sure that this iPhone feature has and will save lives, and it may also risk them due to resource mismanagement.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > ... but it certainly won't have the reach of putting the feature in people's phones. I think this may be another job for Bayes. Apple's algorithm may be very accurate at detecting car crashes when there are car crashes, but most of the time there are not car crashes. As a result it may actually be super inaccurate at the 'population' level. So while it may have the reach, the incidence of false positives and the infrastructure misallocation may yield worse outcomes than not having the system in the first place.
  - noodlesUK 3y ago
    > I think this may be another job for Bayes. Definitely. I think it is difficult to assess the scale of the issue here without any raw numbers. In terms of resource allocation, this quote in the article seems to suggest that they weren't so stretched thin that they had any issues. >Our employees really stepped up, as first responders always do really step up in the line of duty and they did. And we didn’t have any situation where we couldn’t help someone because of the amount of calls.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    Yeah at some point Apple will have to make the calculation actual lives saved vs. useless dispatches of emergency services A good individual idea not always turns out to be great when taken at a population level
    - alvarezbjm-hn 3y ago
      Is apple paying for the false alarms? I assume they aren't (They aren't in the saving lives bussiness) I suppose they have no motive for this: "Apple will have to make the calculation actual lives saved vs. useless dispatches"
- bombolo 3y ago
  Do you think most car owners in the world have a functioning new iphone with them at all times while in the car?
- 3y ago
babyshake 3y ago
You can keep it in the phone, but use phone GPS to detect that a crash-like event correlates to something that looks like a crash from recent GPS data. That should reduce the false positives.
- mh- 3y ago
  Phones don't keep a GPS fix in the background 24/7. This would be prohibitively expensive, battery-wise. iPhones do have approximate location available at all times, via wi-fi scanning/databases and tower ~triangulation. This wouldn't be good enough to infer any sort of acute acceleration/deceleration. All of that said, none of it helps if you were sitting at a red light for 3 minutes before being rear-ended.
cauthon 3y ago
The automatic detection and activation of "driving focus" in iOS has been extremely accurate in my experience. Seems like it'd be easiest to simply filter out "car crashes" when the phone isn't associated with a "driving" state.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  On the other hand my iOS phone has never activated driving focus even when I'm driving. I suspect that's because I never connected my phone to the car over Bluetooth.
  - hermitdev 3y ago
    FWIW, my wife's iphone turns on driving mode while a passenger in my car, even though her phone is not paired to my car at all.
  - cauthon 3y ago
    I don't have bluetooth in my car. Going over about 10-15 mph seems to trigger it.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    There’s a setting to switch between speed or connection to a car as criteria.
taeric 3y ago
And then it would be worthless for hikers, bikers, elderly.... This is, all told, a fairly useful feature that has historically been accomplished only with dedicated hardware. Such that I'm surprised at all of the indignation here. I remember when the watch came out, that there were many stories on how it had helped folks. Seems a straight line from those to false positives. There are probably also false negatives, such that the feature has work to do in both directions.
- TremendousJudge 3y ago
  That's moving the goalposts? If the feature is for "car crashes" it's reasonable to put it int he car. A generic "this person had some sort of accident" is a much broader specification and much harder to manage all the edge cases for.
  - taeric 3y ago
    It is crash detection. It has saved some biker's lives.
    - TremendousJudge 3y ago
      I'm not saying it's not valuable, I'm saying that without building a more specialized system you will never be able to filter a good chunk of false positives. And it's not great to have false calls on the emergency system, since it makes it worse for everyone.
- virtue3 3y ago
  You are massively underestimating the strain and resources expended for false positives for emergency services. This will be a major issue for municipalities. And it won't be apple footing the bill it will be your local tax dollars at work. Put another way; if an emergency team arrives late to another accident because they were tied up on a false positive from an iphone and that results in less effective care, what happens? Do we just front the bill for more emergency workers? Do we hold apple accountable for false positives? Do we hold the user accountable for false positives (I guarantee most people are gonna start turning it off then). Seems like emergency response centers are a little mixed in how they feel about the feature. But this last point is especially important as to why false positives are pretty irresponsible. "An automated call from Crash Detection could cost responders as much as $10,000, and they have a limited budget." https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/09/apple-crash-detection-now-causing-problems-in-minnesota https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/09/apple-crash-detec...
aksss 3y ago
My 2012 F150 behaves this way (supposedly) - the truck will try to call 911 using your BT-connected phone in the event of a crash. I’ve assumed that’s how GM cars with Onstar worked too, using their built in cell connection.

mattnewton 3y ago

> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? I wouldn’t - it’s not clear to me this feature is saving lives. Why not incorporate it into the car?

cutemonster 3y ago
Apple can't decide to do that? And if they cooperated with a manufacturer, that'd affect only its future cars, few compared to everyone with an iPhone. And that'd sell more cars not more iPhones
- mattnewton 3y ago
  I know apple can’t easily decide to do that, but they can decide to _not_ do this with such a high false positive rate. I don’t think selling iPhones is a universal good (even as an aapl shareholder). Selling aftermarket car sensors or whatever if they really wanted to be in the market for this makes sense to me. But, I haven’t seen a good source on how frequently the false positive trigger versus real calls where the caller was unlikely to place it themselves. I could be totally wrong.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    I wonder what the watch false positives are like, too. I was playing with my dog and my watch tried to call 911 thinking I fell. Seems a bit excessive to me. Especially since I’m not over 80 years or or whatever.
    - FinnKuhn 3y ago
      Maybe, but in most circumstances where you don't need help you will notice the call and can cancel it in time.

samuellavoie90 3y ago

Shouldn't a system like that be part of the car, not the phone? Trying to force a feature to exist outside of the context where it makes sense can only lead to issues in my opinion.

bitcurious 3y ago
The average age of a car in the states is 12.5 years. Mandating the tech in cars means that only a small fraction of comparatively well off Americans will benefit from crash detection. Rolling it out in smartphones democratizes this safety feature to a great extent. Plus, there are pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, etc., who can crash.
- recursive 3y ago
  Seatbelts were mandated some time ago. This was done even though most cars were old. Then, time passed. Now, all cars have seat belts. Most crashes have at least one car involved.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dahfizz 3y ago
  Do we have evidence that this feature is actually providing benefit? So much so that we as a society can't possibly wait 10 years for it to be ubiquitous in cars? Was it common before to get in a serious accident but nobody calls 911? If a call goes through when there was a legitimate accident, do the 911 operators even care, or do they assume all these automated calls are false positives? I think it's likely that this feature does more harm than good by ddosing the 911 infrastructure.
  - taeric 3y ago
    Per the story, it didn't overwhelm them. It caused an increase, but they were able to field all calls. Such that you would need something other than this to show it caused actual harm. You also don't have to search too hard to see that it has, in fact, been useful. First news search I found: https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/15/police-officer-apple-watch-fall-detection/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/15/police-officer-apple-watch-fa... I see no reason to think there aren't others.

sowbug 3y ago

I'd filter cases where the phone wasn't previously traveling fast enough for the holder to have been in a vehicle, and cases where the phone wasn't near a road. This would require AGPS rather than just the less power-hungry IMU, but maybe that's the price for not DDOSing 911 infrastructure.

ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
Yeah, atleast try to categorize what activity is going on and filter on those.
raverbashing 3y ago
Or, is this at an isolated area? Useless to activate 'crash-mode' in a crowded area
- jamwil 3y ago
  I think this gets at a logical algorithmic improvement. I assume they use aggregate location data for things like real-time traffic. There’s no need for these alerts to trigger if there is a critical mass of iPhones near the ‘incident’.

Calavar 3y ago

The solution is to move the system to the car. Cell phones are the wrong tool for the problem. Rollout will be much slower on the automotive side, but this can be addressed if we legistlate such systems up from luxury safety features to mandatory ones. Just like what we did in the past for airbags, automatic antilock braking, etc.

megous 3y ago

> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? It's already done and mandated. Why design something new? https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-emergencies/emergency-assistance-vehicles-ecall/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...

brundolf 3y ago

This feels like such an obvious failure-mode that I just assumed when they announced it that it would be smarter- incorporating different sensors, factoring in the exact way it tumbles, etc. If it really is just absolute acceleration, the false-positives are no surprise

tzs 3y ago

> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? If significant motion does not stop shortly after a candidate crash is identified then reject the candidate as a false positive. Maybe also listen for voices. If you can detect people talking and they seem to be reasonably coherent that suggests that even if there was a crash there are people on site already who can take care of summoning emergency services if needed.

ecuaflo 3y ago

Apple maps automatically pops up with directions to home when I connect to my 2008 car’s bluetooth. I’d just enable it when connected to a vehicle’s bluetooth. Or if the phone continually collects sensor data already for this feature, I’d just make sure the second preceding the supposed crash was consistent with traveling in a vehicle, not being in the same place. It won’t work when you are hit by something though in that case.

ecuaflo 3y ago
Third option: only call 911 if there is no movement after the supposed crash.

mejutoco 3y ago

Light sensor. If the phone is in a handbag, there will hardly be any light. If it is in a car or flies away some amount of light would be perceptible by the sensors. Or just disable this feature. We got along ok before without it. First, do no harm.

pimlottc 3y ago
Plenty of people leave their phone in their pocket/bag while they’re in the car.
- mejutoco 3y ago
  Of course you are right. It won't work with them then. This feature can never work 100%. The point is to have less false positives. Maybe the feature should ask the user: where do you put the phone normally? handbag, pocket; where while driving? while riding a bike? and the software would use sound, light sensors, based on the answers, etc. Otherwise simply stop this feature, since it is more trouble than it is worth it.
  - plewd 3y ago
    Surely a false positive is better than a false negative right? Having such restrictive requirements for the call to activate seems like it'd do more harm than good.
    - mejutoco 3y ago
      I think exactly the opposite. Having all those fake calls is the harm. Not having this service is the default, so unless it provides a lot of accuracy it should not be implemented. Worst case is real human calls start getting ignored or the response is delayed because of the noise of all these fake calls. This is a serious public safety issue, and it should not be up to a company to decide if they collapse it to sell more phones.

RC_ITR 3y ago

'This is an automated call from an iPhone that has detected a crash without user input. The current coordinates of the phone are XXX" Pretty easy to filter all the car crashes coming from a grassy lawn somewhere.

croshan 3y ago

> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? If you want to prevent false positives—then, same as you’ve described, but only enable when either: - phone is connected to Carplay via USB or bluetooth - phone is connected to a bluetooth device known to be an auto (inferred by manufacturer ID, and configurable in bluetooth settings) - GPS data for the last 5 minutes indicate you’re driving And display an indicator on lockscreen that shows this feature is enabled. Of course, consider that the downside of false positives don’t affect consumers or manufacturers—rather, they affect public utilities. Then, it’s easy to understand why this happens.

activiation 3y ago

Very funny... It should be very easy to determine if it was going 15mph+ on the road before the "crash" though ... Apple is just fucking dumb

rz2k 3y ago

I think it’s possible that the noise levels at a festival resemble the very loud noise of a car crash on some level, and that is part of the equation in triggering the crash detection. If it were g-forces alone that are confusing the phone there might be more stories about fall detection rather than just car crash detection. Even though the age cohort at festivals might be less likely to explicitly enable fall detection, I think it’s a default setting.

rtkwe 3y ago

They could build some better logic to determine how likely it is the phone is in a car at the moment and specifically for this kind of situation build longer baselines to determine if the user is likely to have heard the warning that the phone has determined it might have sensed a crash. The first option seems like it would solve a number of similar issues as well.

DropInIn 3y ago

Maybe the phone just shouldn't at all and if people want such a feature they can purchase an accessory for their vehicle... Really, this is effectively criminal under the statute iiuc

adriancr 3y ago

> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash? Keep state for a longer period of time. Activate when you start driving and deactivate when parking. Start could be triggered by gps detecting movement over longer period of time over roads. That would avoid festival where you're stationary in a place where cars arent allowed. Problem here is solved.