Prescott, Arizona (AZ Family) — The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office shared an automated 911 call from the night Christine Little’s car went off a cliff in Prescott last Friday.
“911, what? The owner of this iPhone was in a bad car accident and won’t be answering calls,” the automated phone announced.
The emergency call included coordinates and an approximate search radius to help first responders locate Little’s body in the Thumb Butte area.
YCSO spokesperson Paul Wick said Little’s Apple Watch alerted him to the accident.
“That allowed us to get to the scene faster, so we were able to find her body faster and find the actual scene of the accident,” Wick said.
Wick said this was at least the third time in the past 10 months that Little’s smartwatch had alerted him to an emergency.
Ken Colburn, Founder and CEO of Data Doctors, Inc.
In recent years, cell phone brands have begun building into smartphones and watches a feature called “crash detection” on most phones and “drop detection” on others, Colburn said.
He said the feature uses sensors to track users’ movements when enabled.
“One of them (sensors) is the gyroscope, which knows what direction you are facing, like when you use Google Maps. It helps you track how fast you’re going,” he said.
Colburn explained that if the sensor detects a sudden change in the gadget’s movement, speed or direction, the feature will trigger a 911 call if the user doesn’t respond to the initial alert sent. did.
“This is a great feature that could potentially save your life,” Colburn said.
He explained that because the 911 network operates on a separate platform, calls are likely to get through even in areas with unstable signal.
Colburn said iPhone 14 or latersome Google Pixel smartphonemost smartwatches have a “collision detection” feature available.
However, he explained that it depends on the brand and whether the feature is enabled.
Colburn said Samsung doesn’t have this feature on its phones yet, but he’s confident it will soon. Samsung has an “Emergency SOS” feature that requires users to press a button to call for help.
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