Why Apple Watch and iPhone (and Android) call 112 even if there isn’t an emergency

The alarm comes from the New York Times: Apple Watch and iPhone would call for help even when there is no emergency, thus preventing the workers from recognizing the real cases of serious danger. Something similar would also be happening in Italy, so much so that the Risk Prevention and CUE Service of the Autonomous Province of Trento would have published a handbook for skiers published by the Risk Prevention and CUE Service of the Autonomous Province of Trento invites you to deactivate the automatic alert functions on smartphones and smartwatches.

Technology

From 2018, with Apple Watch Series 4, a function called Fall detection arrived on the Apple smartwatch, then present in all subsequent models. The watch uses algorithms that analyze accelerometer and gyroscope data to detect if the wearer has fallen; in this case it emits vibrations, sounds an alarm and displays a message. You can choose whether to contact 911 or ignore the alert by pressing the Digital Crown, tapping Done in the top left corner, or tapping I’m OK. If not, after one minute the alarm sounds, which calls the local emergency services, indicating that it has detected a dangerous fall. Optionally, you can also configure Fall Detection to alert previously chosen friends and family.

Crash Detection has been added to this feature since last year on iPhone and Apple Watch, to ask for help in the event of an accident. It works like this: The iPhone monitors the speed at which you are moving, and first of all determines if you are moving in a car. If then the movement changes direction or stops suddenly, and at the same time a loud noise is detected, a sudden change of position of the telephone and a variation of pressure in the passenger compartment (due to the opening of the airbag), then the function active. As with the fall detection on the Apple Watch, a message appears asking if there really was an accident, and if there is no response, the phone call automatically starts after thirty seconds. Using the cellular network or Wi-Fi, iPhone calls the nearest emergency services and sends a recorded message in the local language, including location. In addition, it also alerts people designated as emergency contacts.

False alarms

But, according to the New York Times, not everything is working as it should: first there were several 911 calls triggered by people who maybe were just having fun on a roller coaster, and now, with the arrival of the winter season, fooling gadgets of the American company would be the skiers. Or rather: their frequent and sudden falls, which fortunately do not always lead to serious consequences. They get up and start skiing again as if nothing had happened, but in the meantime the emergency procedure has been activated without them realizing it: the siren, the vibration, the message on the display are useless (or perhaps the time available is too limited to helmet, goggles, gloves and more). However, if the phone call has gone out and no one answers, the managers of the Rescue Center will call back to make sure that there really is a problem. In the event of no response, emergency services usually leave and head towards the area from which the call comes, identified by the GPS of the telephone or smartwatch.

“I spend all day dealing with accident notifications,” Trina Dummer, acting director of Summit County’s emergency services, tells the NYT: 185 such calls in the week of January 13-22, up from about half in the past winters. . In the single day recounted by the reporter, there would have been 11 out of a total of 30. Dummer is not the only one to underline the issue: a significant increase in automatic false alarms is reported by several other popular American ski areas, such as Colorado, Minnesota, Utah and British Columbia, but also Canada. And, as can be read in some comments to the article, they don’t just come from Apple devices: Android smartphones also have a similar function.

Apple’s response

“We have been notified that in some specific scenarios these features have activated emergency services when the user has not been in a serious traffic accident or violent fall,” an Apple spokesperson told the NYT. However, the company recalls some cases in which crash detection has actually saved lives: an Apple Watch alerted the authorities after an Indianapolis motorist had crashed into a telephone pole, for example. In another case, he contacted emergency services after a New Jersey man fell off a cliff while hiking. Apple is also working with emergency services to figure out how to make the new features safer and even more useful. The Crash Detection algorithms, “trained with data from a million driving hours and different types of accidents”, have been revised and corrected several times: in iOS 16.1.2 and iOS 16.2 for iPhone, in watchOS 9.2 for Apple Watch . The advice, therefore, is always to install the latest version of the operating system. We only point out how the Fall detection function is deactivated by default, and therefore to use it you must decide to do it, while the Accident detection is active by default, but it is always possible to choose not to use it.

Apple, from troublemaker to lifesaver

by Riccardo Luna

08 September 2022

In Italy

In Italy, the Risk Prevention Service and CUE of the Autonomous Province of Trento has drawn up a handbook for skiers and tourists, in order to prevent unnecessary emergency calls which involve a waste of always limited human resources. According to the CUE of Trentino, an equally effective method for skiing in safety, and which would create fewer false alarms for rescuers, is the Where are U app (for Android and iOS). This app is connected directly to the CUR NUE 112 and, when a request for help is sent, a call is made to 112 and the coordinates of the requester for geolocation are sent. But be careful: it is currently active only in some areas, including Lombardy, Val d’Aosta, Piedmont, Liguria, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sicily and the Province of Rome.