Apple incorporated some emergency-related features into its iPhone 14 that included Emergency SOS via satellite and Crash Detection. Unfortunately, the company’s Crash Detection addition is triggering false alarms for iPhone owners who visit the Japanese Alps for skying, with authorities claiming that they have experienced around 134 incidents in a single month.
In total, Japanese emergency services saw a total of 919 calls in a month, and around 10 percent were false alarms thanks to the iPhone 14’s Crash Detection feature
These false alarms raised by the Crash Detection feature of the iPhone 14 exert unnecessary monetary pressures on the Japanese fire department located in Kita-Alps, Nagano. What likely happens is that when skiers go downhill, their downward velocity unknowingly tampers with the gyroscope of the iPhone 14, making the device falsely believe that a crash has happened. In about a month, Japanese emergency services have said that they have received 919 calls, and around 10 percent of them were made by the iPhone 14.
Apple has previously said that it is working with emergency services that continue to face erroneous alerts in an effort to reduce such false alarms from happening. When an iPhone thinks that a crash has occurred, a countdown starts, along with a long warning siren before an automatic call is placed to nearby emergency services. If users can hear the countdown, they can let the iPhone 14 know that they are not in trouble, but that can be difficult when skiing, as both of your hands are gripping the ski poles.
If you are in a situation where you feel that Crash Detection needs to be enabled because it is always better to be safe than sorry, we recommend not tampering with the iPhone 14’s settings. In other cases, you can simply go to Settings, tap on Emergency SOS and disable the toggle for ‘Call After Serious Crash,’ as that would make things less difficult for personnel who are just trying to do their job.
News Source: The Japan News
