Man who drove off a cliff is saved by iPhone 14

Crash Detection does keep sending false alarms to emergency services, such as when iPhone 14 owners are at a party, but it's also saved lives.

Now CBS News reports that a man driving on Mt. Wilson Road in California was saved by a combination of Crash Detection and Apple's Emergency SOS via Satellite. According to CBS News, the man's car went over a cliff and dropped 400 feet before crashing to a halt.

"He was 400 feet down in a canyon with virtually no way out," Steve Goldsworthy, the Rescue Operations Leader of Montrose Search and Rescue, said. "So, who knows when, or if, we would've located him."

"The location that we got from the iPhone activation was spot on," continued Goldsworthy. "It was basically his phone on its own, calling for help on his behalf."

"I believe that if we didn't have that good location information in a timely manner, he probably would've bled out," added Mike Leum, one of the members of Montrose Search and Rescue said. "I kept telling him how lucky he was."

How the man was saved

It's clear that the Crash Detection feature on his iPhone 14 registered the accident and attempted to contact emergency services. However, reportedly there was no cell reception so it's claimed that the iPhone automatically used Emergency SOS via Satellite.

That feature does put accident victims in contact with rescuers, but it cannot be done automatically. It requires the user to be outdoors, so not within a car, and to aim the iPhone in the direction of the satellite.

The iPhone guides the user to that position, but it is down to the user moving the phone, it can't do it by itself.

Apple's support documentation says that even when a user's regular cell network isn't available, "you may still be able to make the call." That's using other networks in the area, and it's only when that proves impossible that the iPhone will prompt the user to try Emergency Text via Satellite.

Whether the driver managed to use the satellite feature, or a different cell network, the result was that rescuers were alerted to his precise location immediately. Without his iPhone 14, rescuers say it could have been days before they even learned of the crash at the remote location.

Apple introduced Crash Detection with the iPhone 14 range in September 2022, and by October of that year, it was already alerting emergency services to the scene of car crashes far faster than before.