They were asked to disable the feature
The crash detection feature of the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch was the source of a flood of emergency calls from the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee over the weekend. There were about five times as many false emergency calls this year compared to previous years of the festival.
The Bonnaroo Festival took place this past weekend in Manchester, Tennessee and attracted over 80,000 people. Such crowds can put a strain on first responders almost anywhere, but Apple’s Crash Detection feature has reportedly made things worse this year.
provoked influx false calls to 911 service due to their dancing because of Apple Crash Detection feature
Local news outlet WKRN spoke to Scott LeDuc, director of the Coffee County 911 communications center, who explained that the fake 911 calls were prompted by the dancing and cheering crowd.
LeDuc said that Apple offered to send engineers to the festival to help deal with the situation and diagnose the problem. The Manchester Police Department has urged concertgoers to disable collision detection entirely. According to LeDuc, this reduced the number of incoming calls by “40 to 60 percent.”
Crash detection debuted on the iPhone 14, Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE, and Apple Watch Ultra last year. Since then, Apple has repeatedly made adjustments to the function’s algorithm in an attempt to reduce the number of false positives. Crash Detection has been accused of making false 911 calls from skiers, amusement park goers and more.
