Fall detection was one of the main features in the announcement last September, iPhone 14 and the new Apple Watch Series 8 and Ultra. And it’s no less because this feature can make a big difference in certain circumstances. And given that we’re talking about circumstances that can have a particularly tragic outcome, I don’t hesitate to congratulate Apple on the idea and to celebrate that they decided to go in this direction.

In case you are not familiar with this technology, Crash Detection Combines data from multiple iPhone or Apple Watch sensors, more specifically an assembly consisting of a gyroscopic unit, an accelerometer capable of accurately detecting movements with a very high G load. Data from both sensors is constantly evaluated by software that is able to interpret certain patterns as signs that the user has suffered some type of collision-accident in the vehicle.

From this point on, the device will display a countdown message on the screen, and unless the user cancels it, automatically contacts the emergency services, to whom he will provide the necessary information so that they can travel to the place where the accident occurred as soon as possible. This will still allow them to get medical help as quickly as possible in cases where the victim has lost consciousness. This means that the idea is exceptional.

However, As we’ve told you over the past few months, Crash Detection makes some mistakes. For example, not even a month has passed since the announcement of this technology and we already learned that the system interpreted riding on a roller coaster as an accident, and at the beginning of this year, when the ski season begins in the Western Hemisphere, News also began to appear about the effects of skiing on this function.

As the months go by, more activities are booming, which is the new litmus test for the technology, and unfortunately, it seems to keep popping up with new bugs. So as we can read in Gizmodo, dancing at a festival can also falsely trigger fall detection. More specifically, the article reflects the large number of false positive findings that occurred among attendees of the Bonnaroo Music Festival, an event dedicated to music and other artistic disciplines held annually in Manchester, Tennessee, United States.

During the celebration of the event, the usual number of false alarms was multiplied by five And while it didn’t overwhelm emergency services capacity, it did cause some special measures to be taken, such as requiring participants to temporarily disable Crash Detection, a process Apple agreed to. Once the participants followed these instructions, the volume of the emergency announcements returned to normal.

I repeat what I said at the beginning, Crash Detection seems like an excellent idea. Of course I hope Apple does taking very good note of all these incidents to improve its operation, in terms of avoiding false alarms. And I also find it disturbing that the user has to disable it in order to do certain activities and then forget to re-enable it later. But I’m sure Cupertino can find a solution to end this problem.