Apple seeks 911 dispatcher feedback over Emergency SOS skier misfires

That’s how engineering works. Design something, see how it performs in the real world, improve it based on what you learned.

 the spokesperson declined to offer how the feature could be tweaked 

Well, duh. They haven’t gotten the data yet. No point on speculating on the fix until you know what the problem is. 

Leave your phone in a locker until you learn how not to fall. Problem solved. 

DAalseth said:

That’s how engineering works. Design something, see how it performs in the real world, improve it based on what you learned.

 the spokesperson declined to offer how the feature could be tweaked 

Well, duh. They haven’t gotten the data yet. No point on speculating on the fix until you know what the problem is. 

What you’re describing is part of a proof of concept and evaluation phase of engineering. It looks like Apple’s engineers were somewhat lacking in their evaluation and consideration for what else could trigger false positives. Their apparent narrow vision very much reminds me of a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie concerning how to determine if a woman is a witch. Someone suggests they can reach this determination based on whether or not she floats in water. But unlike Apple, someone on their witch determination team asks the question:

“What also floats in water?” 

Apple obviously came up with a set of criteria and algorithms that they assumed and verified would work for determination of their “witch,” i.e., occurrence of a crash. But perhaps they fell a bit short in probing the “What also floats in water?” part. Had they probed a little deeper they could have found it necessary to provide further safeguards, processes, or refinement to help reduce the likelihood of an incorrect determination. Or maybe they did fully understood the lack of precision and decided that the human benefits of a less accurate determination far outweighed the costs in time, money, and disruption of limited first responder resources, so they went to market with what they believed was their best solution for their highest level concern - saving people’s lives.

A measured, pragmatic, and biased towards saving lives approach is distinctly different than simply putting something out there and hoping for the best and knowing that feedback from its performance in the field will allow you to refine it over time. I don’t think Apple ever intends for its customers to serve as crash test dummies, even though customers do end up being testers/crash test dummies to some degree anyway because Apple, like everyone, doesn’t know what they don’t know. The line of distinction really comes down to Apple’s intentions and motivations, which are cultural influences over the engineering and product development process but not part of the engineering process itself. 

In my opinion, none of the false positives identified thus far in Apple’s deployed crash detection performance seem like radical departures from scenarios that would or should have been considered if Apple probed a tiny bit deeper into the “What also floats in water?” line of inquiry. 

Doesn’t the OnStar system connect a person to an OnStar dispatcher first to determine if an actual emergency exists before calling 911?

DAalseth said:

That’s how engineering works. Design something, see how it performs in the real world, improve it based on what you learned.

 the spokesperson declined to offer how the feature could be tweaked 

Well, duh. They haven’t gotten the data yet. No point on speculating on the fix until you know what the problem is. 

Actually in engineering you usually have very strict requirements on how a device will perform under different conditions and you test accordingly both during the design verification phase and the production phase.