Apple's Crash Detection feature on iPhone 14 thinks some roller coaster rides are a severe car crash and proceeds to call 911.
As The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal reports, there have been multiple incidents where an iPhone 14 has contacted emergency services during a roller coaster ride and conveyed the message "The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone."
You can hear an example of the call being made in the tweet below, which also contains the sound of people enjoying a roller coaster ride in the background.
That call was made from Kings Island amusement park outside Cincinnati by an iPhone 14 Pro as it rode the Mystic Timbers roller coaster in the fanny pack of dentist Sara White. It resulted in Warren County Communications Center sending a team to Kings Island, but there was no emergency situation, just wasted time for emergency workers.
This isn't an isolated incident, with at least another six calls logged at Kings Island and an unknown number made on the Joker roller coaster at Six Flags Great America near Chicago. Other sudden and unusual movements can also trigger Crash Detection, for example, dropping your iPhone while driving. That one does make more sense, but is still a false positive the emergency services could do without.
Crash Detection has the potential to save a lot of lives, but wasting the time of emergency workers could also cost them. We also need to consider how new the iPhone 14 is, meaning this problem is only set to get worse as millions more handsets are purchased over the coming months.
Apple may be able to update the detection to differentiate a roller coaster from a car crash, but in the meantime iPhone owners can prevent it from being triggered by either putting their iPhone 14 in Airplane Mode or disabling Crash Detection before getting on the coaster (Settings -> Emergency SOS -> Call After Severe Crash toggle). Just remember to turn it back on afterwards.