As nifty as they may be, a number of Apple Watch units have apparently been making calls to emergency services claiming the user’s life is in danger.
According to an excellent New York Times article, the smartwatch has been dialing 911. In the case of Eric Betts, an emergency dispatcher, a person called in that had originated from a slope at the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area. When Betts tried calling back and asked if there was an emergency, the person at the other end of the line stated that “for the last three days, my watch has been dialing 911.”
Following a decent amount of snowball to the region’s ski resorts, a number of false emergency calls have been places by devices. Virtually all of them have been placed by Apple Watches or iPhone 14s under the mistaken impression that their owners have been debilitated in collisions.
Following the September release of the current Apple Watch Series 8 and iPhone 14 units, Apple included a service meant to detect car crashes and alert 911 dispatchers. The new feature is a more sensitive upgrade of a several-year-old feature that can detect when a user falls and call for help. The latest version appears to be mistaking skiers, and some other fitness enthusiasts, for car-wreck victims.
In some cases, emergency call centers in some ski regions have been inundated with inadvertent, automated calls, dozens or more a week. Phone operators often must put other calls, including real emergencies, on hold to clarify whether the latest siren has been prompted by a human at risk or an overzealous device.
“My whole day is managing crash notifications,” said Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County’s emergency services, which received 185 such calls in the week from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22. (In winters past, the typical call volume on a busy day was roughly half that.) Ms. Dummer said that the onslaught was threatening to desensitize dispatchers and divert limited resources from true emergencies.
Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County’s emergency services. “My whole day is managing crash notifications,” she said.
Dummer’s call center, and those like it, have alerted Apple to the issue. As of mid-January, Apple sent four representatives to observe Ms. Dummer and her team for a day. she said they had plenty of examples to show off.
In a written statement, Alex Kirschner, an Apple spokesman, offered the following:
“We have been aware that in some specific scenarios these features have triggered emergency services when a user didn’t experience a severe car crash or hard fall.”
The company noted that when a crash is detected, the watch buzzes and sends a loud warning alerting the user that a call is being placed to 911, and it provides 10 seconds in which to cancel the call.
Apple has also stated that updates to the feature late last year had been intended to “optimize” the technology and reduce the number of false calls to emergency services.
Apple also maintains a collection of incidents in which the two technologies have come to the rescue.
The issue also seems to extend beyond skiers. “My watch regularly thinks I’ve had an accident,” said Stacey Torman, who works in London at Salesforce and also teaches spin classes. Even if Norman is safely on a stationary bike during her classes, exhorting her class to ramp up the energy, or waving her arms to congratulate them, can be interpreted as signs of danger by her Apple Watch.
“I want to celebrate, but my watch really doesn’t want me to celebrate,” she said. Oh great, she thinks, “now my watch thinks I’m dead.”
Apple introduced fall detection technology in 2018 after developing an algorithm based on the trajectory of a wrist wearing a watch and acceleration at time of impact. Its crash-detection technology, introduced in September, was tested in crash tests and labs on iPhones and Apple Watches.
Still, something an out the way skiers accelerate, stop, or jostle seems to elude the technology. Skiers, who often dress in helmets and layers of clothing, often do not to detect the warning, so they may not cancel the call or respond to the 911 dispatcher.
In the case of Aspen Mountain, Apple iPhone 14 and Apple Watch users are advised to upgrade to the latest versions of their iOS or watchOS operating systems to avoid false calls to emergency services.
If you’ve seen this issue on your end with your iPhone 14 or Apple Watch, please let us know about your experience in the comments.