First responders were swamped with false Crash Detection calls during this year’s Bonnaroo festival.
The Bonnaroo festival had more than 80,000 in attendance and was held in Manchester, TN. The crowd apparently had a lot of iPhone 14 and Apple Watch models, which triggered Crash Detection calls to 911. Coffee County 911 Communication Center director Scott LeDuc spoke with local news, saying that false calls were triggered by the crowd partying and dancing.
LeDuc mentioned that Apple reached out and offered to help with the influx of false Crash Detection calls by sending engineers to diagnose and manage the problem, but they were able to overcome the problem over the phone. The Manchester Police Department had concert-goers disable their Crash Detection, which reduced the calls by around 40-60 percent.
Crash Detection is a safety feature for the Apple Watch Ultra, SE, Series 8, and iPhone 14. Apple updated the feature’s algorithm last time to reduce the number of false positives.
