Interesting story about the AppleWatch fall detection

I work for my local EMS agency and we had a call come out today for a vehicle that ran off the road and in the call comments it stated that their AppleWatch detected a fall with no response to the alerts. Luckily passerby’s had noticed the accident and called it in, but if they hadn’t it’s nice to know the 911 Dispatch Center was contacted and would have sent us even if no one had witnessed the accident.

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That reminds me of one of my posts on fall detection.

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It’s good to hear that validation from a EMS professional.

I’ve had false positives with fall detection, but now keep it on. I fee it is important to edit the SOS section of Settings on the Watch and make sure the Medical ID data is up to date. I don’t know how widely medical personnel are aware of the data in Medical ID, but it might be useful.

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That is precisely WHY I bought an Apple Watch – the fall protection. Peace of mind. I had to get an iPhone too in order to use it which is certainly preferable to an Android.

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I like fall detection. I have had two acquaintances have serious falls and not get discovered for 12 and 24 hours. But I do get a lot of false positives when I am playing Pickleball. I have to be alert enough to detect that the watch intends to call 911 and cancel that behavior. I wonder just how many false positives the watch generates that are NOT canceled and result in emergency services showing up.

I wish that Shortcuts would allow me to turn fall detection off and on as I arrive and leave my Pickleball venues but like many things in Shortcuts it is not fleshed out enough to do this kind of stuff transparently.

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I can only speak for myself but this is the first time I’ve seen any mention of an Apple Watch in the call comments. I don’t think false positives call 911 that often.