iOS 16.1.2: Apple releases new update for iPhone to improve crash detection

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Louise Thomas

Editor

Apple has updated iOS 16, its new update for the iPhone, with improvements to its crash detection feature.

Apple’s latest iPhones, the 14 and 14 Pro, include new crash detection tools that use sensors to spot when their owners may have been in a vehicle accident and call the emergency services. The same tool is available on the new Apple Watch.

But since it was released, some users have complained that the feature is going off during other high speed and dramatic activities. The phones keep calling the emergency services when their owners are riding on rollercoasters, for instance, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

The feature shows a pop-up to users when it is triggered, alerting to them the fact that it has spotted a crash. But if users do not explicitly press that within 20 seconds, it calls the police, in case the owner is incapacitated.

Apple’s new update does not specify that it makes the phone any better at spotting such false detections. It only says that it includes “Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models”, and Apple gave no further information.

Apple did however recently introduce a new beta version of iOS 16, numbered 16.2, which among other features includes a way to report when a phone has wrongly triggered the Emergency SOS feature that calls the police. Those reports will presumably feed into Apple’s system in the hope of avoiding future similar examples.

It is not clear how many of the iPhone’s crash activations are false, either as a percentage or in absolute terms. Apple says that the feature has been extensively tested and reviews have indicated that it is only during activities that are very similar to car crashes – such as dramatic rides – that are likely to trigger it.

The new crash detection feature has already alerted emergency services to existing crashes. Just weeks after it was released, the police were called to a fatal car crash in Nebraska by the feature.