Yet Another Knock Against Crash Detection
Matt Richtel, writing for The New York Times (Internet Archive):
“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.
“Apple needs to put in their own call center if this is a feature they want,” she said.
I’ve seen a bunch of these anecdotes going around. I feel tension mounting against Crash Detection because of all the false positive calls, which is a shame because it can be life-saving in its intended environment. Apple’s going to have to do better here, and quickly, before all good will for the feature is spent.
For what it’s worth, I feel myself on high alert for that buzz and siren when I’m skiing, biking, or during any activity when my watch could misconstrue a normal jolt as a “hard fall”. I’d be mortified to place an unnecessary call to 911.