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PARK CITY – New crash technology can cause an iPhone to call 911, even if the user doesn’t need help.
Summit County dispatchers are seeing an increase in accidental 911 calls from skiers. The technology is designed to detect serious car crashes, but is often activated accidentally at ski resorts.
If the Apple device senses that a collision has occurred, a message appears on the screen with an alert sound. The user can cancel the alert, but if there is no response within 20 seconds, an automated voice message is sent to the nearest 911 call center.
“We’ll get a call that says the owner of this Apple Watch or iPhone has either been in a serious accident or they’ve been involved in a car accident,” Summit County Dispatch Center Supervisor Suzie Butterfield said.
Collision detection technology is available on iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Ultra. It sends the GPS coordinates of the user’s location and their callback number to dispatchers.
“They won’t answer you when you first start talking because I don’t even think they knew they did it, but on the call back… they usually say, ‘Oh, sorry, I was doing ski”. Everything is fine,” said Butterfield.
If the dispatcher cannot get hold of the iPhone user, it will notify the ski patrol.
Butterfield said she gets three to five emergency calls from Apple techs a day. She said none of the calls she received were activated on purpose.
“They usually have no idea they even called us,” Butterfield said.
She said she doesn’t care about emergency pocket numbers.
“If we can avoid emergencies, that’s a good thing,” she said.
Butterfield sees technology as a tool, not a nuisance.
“One can be skiing and hit a tree and be knocked unconscious and not be visible to other skiers,” she said.
Apple’s collision detection is enabled by default. Dispatchers at the Summit County call center said keep it that way.
“We don’t want you to disable the feature,” Butterfield said. “We’d rather you be safe. We don’t mind taking that call because if something really happened, we want to be able to reach you.”
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