Rollercoaster repeatedly triggers iPhone 14 Crash Detection

The Crash Detection feature of the iPhone 14 is causing problems for a theme park near Cincinnati, with repeated false-positives from iPhones on rides leading to multiple calls to emergency services.

Apple's latest iPhone and Apple Watch safety feature, Crash Detection, uses onboard sensors and mountains of crash data to detect whether or not it is involved with a car accident. Despite the training of the system, it seems that rollercoasters could be its weakness.

The Warren County Communications Center has been the recipient of multiple iPhone crash-detection calls, all since the iPhone 14 went on sale in September. According to the center, a number of them were caused by passengers of rollercoasters at the King Island amusement park near Cincinnati.

Multiple recordings of iPhone-based detection calls were provided to the Wall Street Journal by the center, prompted by the devices misinterpreting ride movements and noise as collisions. The theme park isn't the only one with the problem, as alerts were also raised a few times at Six Flags Great America near Chicago.

While the iPhone and Apple Watch does offer a ten-second warning before placing the call to emergency services, this may not be cancellable in time. The park visitor may not notice if the ride is still in motion, or the iPhone could be stowed away out of view for safety, and not heard over screams.

An Apple spokesperson told the report the technology provides peace of mind, and work will continue to improve it.

False positives happen occasionally in everyday life, and are arguably better than not being triggered at all. But in the case of rollercoasters, such mistakes could be avoided by leaving devices with Collision Detection-style features in a locker or with someone who isn't going on the ride for safekeeping.

Independent testing has offered mixed results when it comes to actually detecting a crash, with some having more success than others.

19 Comments

M68000 868 comments · 7 Years

About 2 years ago

Going to ask a dumb question since I don’t own a 14 series phone. Can this feature be shut off?

So, abrupt changes in velocity are what can trigger this? What about times people have to stop very quickly or change direction while driving but there is no crash? This thing will be calling for help?

xyzzy-xxx 199 comments · 6 Years

Looks like a software / calibration problem, normally a crash has a much higher g-force than rollercoasters are allowed to produce ...

applebynature 119 comments · 9 Years

M68000 said:

Going to ask a dumb question since I don’t own a 14 series phone. Can this feature be shut off?

Yes, its easy to switch the feature off in Settings > Emergency SOS > Toggle for "Call After Severe Crash"

M68000 said:

So, abrupt changes in velocity are what can trigger this? What about times people have to stop very quickly or change direction while driving but there is no crash? This thing will be calling for help?

No, near crashes will not trigger it. There are youtube videos of people trying to get it to activate by literally crashing cars together and many of them had an extremely difficult time getting it to activate, although some were successful. The video by Luke Miani comes to mind if you want to see them with multiple iphones/apple watches do a big crash derby with several cars and dozens of impacts. Never once did they get it to activate.

AppleZulu 2174 comments · 8 Years

This should (but won’t) give people pause about the forces they subject themselves to on some roller coasters.

I’ve found roller coasters to be less and less fun the more I’ve learned about engineering, biology, and the foibles of the people who design, maintain and operate those things.