9:33 AM
The new feature emergency call of the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch SE, Series 8 and Ultra, which aims to detect accidents, sadly does not appear to be developed yet. Announced in September on the latest smartphones from the Apple brand, this novelty should notify traffic accidents : In the event of a collision, an alarm is issued on the device. If the user does not react within 20 seconds, the emergency services are contacted automatically, regardless of the presence of the network or wifi.
Only here, second Colorado sun, The Summit County Emergency Center in the US received dozens of rogue calls from Apple in just one weekend. Still, no road accident to report. These were skiers coming off the slopes before suddenly stopping for some reason.
15 to 20% of calls made by skiers by mistake
In one of these emergency centers, 15-20% of daily calls come from these automatic calls from new Apple devices. “These calls involve a huge amount of resources, from dispatchers to assistants to ski patrols. We divert essential resources people who really need it because of a feature on a phone”, complains Trina Dummer, director of one of the call centers. Aware of the problem, the American company reported it was working on a solution which he hoped to have in the first quarter of 2023, on the occasion of a new update.
However, despite the many bugs, the call centers have asked skiers to keep the function active: it can in fact be useful on the slopes when a skier hits a tree for example.
