The iPhone 14 comes with a nifty little feature: When it detects a motor vehicle crash, it will automatically alert authorities to come to your aid. Friend of the site Douglas Sonders discovered exactly how quickly this feature kicks in when his own iPhone fell from the bars of his LiveWire while riding the streets of New York City. That wasn’t an emergency — just an embarrassing situation kicked off by an insecure phone mount — but it seems Apple’s crash detection can be truly lifesaving when things go south.
Search and rescue teams in Los Angeles County discovered this firsthand last Friday, when they received an alert from an iPhone that had detected a crash. It turned out the phone was inside a car that had fallen nearly 400 feet from a cliff — in an area that, according to first responders, had no cell coverage. Without that emergency feature, first responders said, it’s unlikely the driver would have survived.
The search and rescue team didn’t give too many details on the crash; how it happened, who was involved, or the condition of the driver when rescued. Responders did mention, however, that the driver was on the path to bleeding out — and would likely have succumbed to such a fate were it not for the iPhone’s intervention.
Over the months since Crash Detection’s release, it’s been the subject of plenty of mockery: It might warn your friends and family when you drop your phone from your bike, convincing them you’ve died horribly, or it may inundate a 911 call center with reports of situations in which no human person is in any real danger. Still, when a situation like this one arises, it’s nice to know the feature does work as intended. If anything, being a little overly-sensitive is better than the alternative.