iPhone 14, Apple Watch: car crash detection doesn’t always work

Several people wanted to test the car accident detection that Apple offers with the iPhone 14 and the Apple Watch Series 8/Ultra. The first tests were positive, but that of the wall street journal shows that all is not perfect.

Detection does not work depending on the conditions

Journalist Joanna Stern recruited Michael Barabe to crash a car, featuring a heavy-duty steel frame, into two unoccupied vehicles parked in a junkyard: a 2003 Ford Taurus and a 2008 Dodge Caravan. were mixed, with the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch only detecting some collisions, which Apple said was due to the test conditions in the case not providing enough signals to trigger the feature each time. time.

An Apple spokesperson explained that the iPhone was not connected via Bluetooth to CarPlay, which would indicate the car was in use. Also, he states that the vehicles may not have traveled a sufficient distance before the accident to indicate driving. If the iPhone had received these additional indicators and its GPS had shown the cars were on a real road, the likelihood of an alert would have been greater, he said.

Apple uses several elements to detect an accident:

• Sudden changes in speed : A new high g-force accelerometer detects extreme accelerations and decelerations up to 256 g.
• Sudden changes in direction : A high dynamic range gyroscope monitors the car’s sudden changes in orientation.
• Crash tests : Apple has developed advanced motion algorithms by performing rollover, frontal, side and rear crash tests.
• Changes in cabin pressure : the barometer detects the changes in pressure caused by the deployment of the airbags.
• Intense collision noises : When you are driving, the microphone identifies extreme sound levels caused by a collision. For added privacy, all processing is done on your iPhone.
• Real accident data : Apple has used public data from actual crashes to make the crash detection feature as reliable as possible.

When a serious car crash is detected, a compatible iPhone or Apple Watch displays an alert and beeps. If the user is able, he can call the emergency services by dragging the dedicated slider on the iPhone or Apple Watch. If it does not respond to the alert after 10 seconds, the device starts a new 10-second countdown. If he still hasn’t answered, the device calls the emergency services on its own.