Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, B.C., are urging skiers and snowboarders with the latest iPhones and Apple Watch models to disable Apple’s new Crash Detection feature before hitting the slopes.
“Headed skiing? Please mind your crash detection,” the Comox Valley RCMP said in a recent announcement on social media.
Comox Valley is home to the Mount Washington ski resort with 60 km of slopes. The RCMP’s request comes after the local fire department, emergency medical services, and police all spent time looking for a non-existent car crash up on Mount Washington last month that was falsely reported by an Apple Watch after a skier took a fall.
“There is a crash detection software installed on newer Apple devices,” said the Comox Valley RCMP’s Media Relations Officer, Cst. Monika Terragni.
“We are asking users to disable to crash detection if you’re skiing or snowboarding with others in a populated area, or to check your device immediately after a fall to ensure it did not call 911. It is also important to keep your device up-to-date with the latest operating system as developers continue to tweak this feature.”
Crash Detection is currently available on iPhone 14 and select Apple Watch models. It uses built-in sensors to detect when the user has been in a car crash and automatically contacts emergency services if they do not promptly dismiss a crash alert.
However, the feature has shown itself to be lacking in accuracy. Crash Detection can unfortunately be triggered by a lot more than a car crash, which would warrant an emergency response, including rollercoaster rides, motorbiking, and, of course, skiing. The feature reportedly made 185 false 9-1-1 calls in just 9 days to a dispatch center in a popular skiing region in Colorado.
Apple updated Crash Detection to optimize its sensitivity with iOS 16.1.2 in late November, but the feature appears to still be causing plenty of false alarms.
