Apple's Crash Detection feature in its iPhones is being blamed for a dramatic rise in visits by emergency responders to the Bonnaroo Music Festival.
The annual Bonnaroo Music Festival in Coffee County, Tennessee took place from June 14 to June 18, with more than 80,000 people in attendance. Also in attendance were first responders, who were summoned to the festival a lot more than in previous years.
According to Scott LeDuc, Director of the Coffee County 911 Communication Center, there was approximately five times the number of false 911 calls during the festival than average, reports WKRN. It was believed Crash Detection on the iPhone was behind the higher than usual false positives.
An alert was sent to devices in the area advising to deactivate Crash Detection on iPhones once the calls started to flood in, and it worked. "It reduced the amount of calls that we were getting," advised LeDuc, cutting the calls by half.
Apple was contacted and offered to visit the county to assist, but the problem was diagnosed over the phone. It is suspected that the feature was triggered when festival-goers danced to live performances.
Despite the increase in false positive calls, the emergency services were still able to manage the problem. All callers were located to confirm the 911 calls were false, as a precautionary measure.
"Our employees really stepped up, as first responders always do really step up in the line of duty and they did," LeDuc said. "And we didn't have any situation where we couldn'thelp someone because of the amount of calls."
False positives are a constant problem for devices with emergency calling features, and while the focus is on iPhone, Android is also affected by the problem.
In the case of Apple, it has already been forced to investigate false positives caused by rollercoasters, snowmobiles, and skiers.
The advice to iPhone owners who discover their iPhone has placed a call to emergency services is not to hang up, but to continue the call and inform the responder that it was a mistake.