l’iPhone 14 has a problem with the roller coaster. The most adrenaline-pumping rides in theme parks risk interfering with the function that can detect traffic accidents — and automatically call for help.
Thanks to the latest generation of accelerometers and machine learning, the new iPhone 14 and the latest generation Apple Watch can understand when the user was involved in a violent car accident. In these cases, the phone starts to vibrate to give way to a countdown: if the user does not interrupt the countdown, iOS assumes that he has lost consciousness and therefore ask for help independently. It is clearly a very useful feature, potentially life saver.
Too bad Apple didn’t take theme parks into account when designing. The protagonist of this story is Sara White, an Ohio dentist who had taken a day off in… theme park King’s Island. Among other things, De White had decided to get in too Mystic Timbers, an extremely adrenaline-pumping roller coaster with several inversions, abrupt descents and sudden braking. And it’s precisely one of the roller coaster’s many abrupt slowdowns that confused his iPhone 14, which he had kept in the pouch during the ride. Obviously, the phone registered the sudden shift from high speed to zero as a traffic accident, triggering the normal emergency routine. And so the countdown began. But the woman clearly didn’t notice: it’s hard to notice the phone’s vibrations when you’re upside down at 85 mph.
Ever since the iPhone 14 came out, the 911 has been flooded with accidentally generated SOS
Moral? The iPhone 14 cried for help starting the classic pre-recorded voice: “The owner of this iPhone has been in a serious car accident and is not answering the phone”. The operators then called the woman in turn, but again without getting an answer. The ambulances departed at great speed along with the rescuers to promptly go to the scene, only to find that no accident had happened.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, it was not an isolated case. It had happened five times since the first iPhones 14 came out. And this only in Ohio, as such cases have also been recorded in Chicago, where the Six Flags Great America theme park is located.
Meanwhile, some theme parks have started installing signs advising owners of the new iPhone 14s to activate Airplane Mode before getting on the roller coaster. It would be the only way to avoid a false positive, as the iPhone 14 does not currently offer the ability to accident detection away.
Source: Lega Nerd
