Thanks, Apple: Colorado Emergency Services Bombarded with Automated 911 Calls from Skiers’ iPhones

Dispatchers at the Summit County 911 Center have reportedly been fielding huge numbers of automated notifications from local skiers’ iPhones and Apple Watches at the county’s four ski areas last weekend. New iPhones feature “crash detection” and “fall detection” that automatically call 911 when the device thinks its user has been in a car wreck or other accident, which skiing apparently sets off as well.

The Colorado Sun reports that last weekend, dispatchers at the Summit County 911 Center received 71 automated crash notifications from iPhones and Apple watches belonging to skiers at the county’s four ski resorts.

However, none of these notifications were related to an emergency situation. Even though none of the notifications were related to an emergency, they still required time and effort to investigate. If the skier did not answer a return call, a deputy from the special operations team would reach out to ski patrollers to verify the location of the automated notification.

Trina Dummer, the interim director of the Summit County 911 Center, commented: “We are not in the practice of disregarding calls. These calls involve a tremendous amount of resources, from dispatchers to deputies to ski patrollers. And I don’t think we’ve ever had an actual emergency event.”

The Apple iPhone 14 and the new generation of Apple Watches feature “crash detection” and “fall detection” features that are designed to automatically call 911 when the devices detect a sudden stop, which is intended to indicate that the user has been involved in a car crash. While this technology has been praised for potentially saving lives, it has caused issues for skiers who may come to a sudden stop or fall without requiring emergency assistance.

This month, all of the automated 911 calls received by ski town emergency call centers from skiers with a robotic voice providing latitude and longitude coordinates of a potentially injured person were related to falls on the ski slopes, rather than car accidents.

Dispatch operators in Grand, Eagle, Pitkin, Routt, and Summit counties, which are home to 12 popular ski resorts, have received a high volume of automated calls from skiers’ Apple phones and watches. These calls are taking up resources for emergency response and could potentially delay response to a real emergency if they are received before other 911 calls.

Dummer commented: “We are absolutely diverting essential resources away from people who need it toward a feature on a phone.”

This isn’t the first time that the new Apple feature has caused issues for authorities. In October, 911 dispatchers reported that the feature was being activated when users were enjoying rollercoaster rides at theme parks, backing up the emergency phone systems.

Read more at The Colorado Sun here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan