Recent car crashes bring emergency response through iPhone detection tech
(FOX 9) - Emergency alert technology in Apple’s latest iPhones and watches is getting positive feedback after several recent car crashes across the region.
Law enforcement and 911 dispatch centers report that they have received alerts through phone and watch "crash detection technology."
It works when a person’s device senses a significant impact in a vehicle.
It automatically makes a 911 call and shares critical location information, even if those around cannot talk to dispatchers.
"Seconds count," said Barron County, Wisconsin Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald. "And I think this will have some lifesaving stories to tell as the technology grows."
It is how emergency responders were alerted to last Thursday night’s deadly pick-up truck crash on State Highway 65 in rural Polk County in western Wisconsin.
While her 21-year-old son was killed, Brody Shipe’s mother was relieved to know her son was tended to in just a few minutes because of his phone’s technology.
"Because that phone sent that message, somebody got there and got to him," Delaina Bacon told FOX9’s Paul Blume during an interview at her Hudson home.
Bacon has so many mixed feelings about the deadly crash that occurred on a dark, curvy, rural stretch of Highway 65 that some have dubbed "rollercoaster road." Shipe lost control of his 2011 Dodge Ram pick-up and slammed into trees off the roadway. He was the sole occupant of the vehicle and was killed on impact. With no witnesses at the scene around 10:45 p.m., it was Shipe’s iPhone that alerted dispatch, bringing emergency responders to the precise location in minutes.
Said Bacon, "I am thankful for that because he could have been laying in a field for who knows how long? We all had the location of him, so we knew where his accident was."
Apple has hyped the technology in advertising in its latest phones and watches, relaying critical location information through emergency 911 dispatch centers when it detects a high-speed impact like Shipe’s. And while there have been numerous reports of false alarms, Sheriff Fitzgerald is an early supporter of the technology, believing it will save lives, especially in the rural areas his office patrols, where a serious nighttime crash off a roadway might otherwise go undetected.
"Sometimes, they are false," concluded Fitzgerald. "But it is the one time it is real that we have to be prepared for. And that is what we do in law enforcement."
Apple has said, its technology is meant to respond to "severe crashes" in passenger cars. It is enabled by default in the latest devices, meaning someone has to shut it off in the settings menu if they do not want to use it. Delaina Bacon told Blume, she will make sure any device she gets going forward has the crash detection feature given her family’s experience.