Japan skiers’ smartphones making unnecessary emergency calls
japannews.yomiuri.co.jp
japannews.yomiuri.co.jp
I'm 99% sure she disabled that feature after that.
My mom had fall protection on her Apple Watch, for example, because she lived alone and was getting weaker.
Some people have pride in their appearance and in their independence and don't want to think of themselves as needing such a device. It's not that the Apple Watch is better than the "I've fallen and I can't get up" device, it's that it's better than nothing, which is what they would have in the other case.
If you don't have great manual dexterity, your fingers are wet/dirty/whatever, then using a touch-screen is terrible and frustrating.
Physical buttons, particularly ones that don't rely on manual dexterity, are a much better approach.
Yes, it can (potentially) detect falls, but if it doesn't, and you need to manually activate it then you could find yourself stuck.
The automatic fall detect is the cherry on top, I don't think it gets any easier than pressing a (very light) button for not much time. And if your hands are fucked as well, you can tell Siri to call 911
If you can't speak, can't access the button, can't swipe, and it didn't detect the fall, then I don't think any piece of tech is going to help. You are fucked
What, does it ping your contacts automatically?
I wonder how many of the 351 emergency calls and how many of the 135 erroneous calls were made by a phone's automatic crash detection system. It's obviously not great that the automatic system is placing so many erroneous calls, but it may be worth the burden on Japan's (or any other country's) emergency services if such calls aren't an overwhelming majority.
They estimate is that you add 2 seconds to your mile pace for every extra pound. You can’t tell me that doesn’t affect caloric intensity. I had a problem, last year that the heavier the pack the worse Apple would report my cardiac fitness. Yeah of course I’m shorter of breath today, I’m carrying 20 lbs!
I feel like this whole part of the ecosystem is just in maintenance mode. You can’t learn much when you stop doing.
I'm sorry, but what?
This is a wild claim to assert without any data whatsoever.
You think only one in one thousand people on a _hike_ are carrying a backpack?
Testing is expensive.
Also some of those "influencers" (noting social media doesn't reflect reality) probably live in areas of the country where they have vast wilderness a very short drive away. A short day hike is worth it if you live in Colorado and can get to the trailhead in way under 2 hours. It's not worth it if you live in Boston and need 8 hours to get to anything _somewhat_ remote.
I think they meant - a backpack carrying 10-20 lbs. Sure, most hikers carry a backpack but all it has is maybe a jacket, water and some protein bars.
I haven’t tried again with my latest model. I would have thought the lock would prevent such things, but it didn’t, and I am starting to forget the repro steps.
In this case, the pertinent benefit to weigh against is the benefit of fall detection, particularly for elderly people, but also for active folks e.g. falling while cycling.
Obviously we’d rather not make false emergency calls, all else being equal. But it could be worth it on its face, we need to analyze the benefits to know.
Glad it doesn't seem to be enabled in Switzerland, my wife is a doctor, worked on emergency and also as a doctor with ambulances so has perspective from other side. This is outright criminal behavior from Apple, easily to get sued for billions in each bigger market (not saying they would automatically lose, they can play well meaning idiot at the courts but PR effect is nevertheless properly bad).
From the looks of it, Apple gets to market this feature but shoves the work off to public rescue services, which are then burdened by false positives due to Apple unilaterally letting their phones dial emergency numbers and putting the onus on the user to handle 'impact classification'.
And also the best heart rate monitor and fall detector is the one you're always carrying (smartwatch). Same with this feature on the phone.
Of course people won't buy a specific "call the authorities when I get in a crash" -device and carry it with them.
https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
They silence factual information which could be critical of their performance in San Francisco.
And they appear to cause real harm, according to the PDF interfering with firefighting, and disrupting public transit.
(I believe in current versions, it asks you during initial setup whether you would like it activated or not.)
(But if you're expecting to be frequently falling onto wet snow or hard ice, it's probably a good idea not to have a $1000 smartphone in your pocket...)
Learning to ski is certainly a particularly strong example of a case where you're likely to have a lot of false positives.
But, honestly, even with something like hiking, tripping over a tree root or something like that isn't exactly rare. I've taken a ton of spills over the years and fortunately nothing worse than some minor bloodshed or maybe a twisted something was involved. (And the one time it was something more serious I didn't actually fall but did have a serious bone break.)
I've been on the fence whether I ought to enable the feature on my watch.
If they got up and have started walking again, its a false positive, or they don't need automatic help.
Maybe Apple is delaying the fix because these news stories are viral marketing for its crash detection feature?
This doesn’t make any sense to me. The user has been in an (assumed) crash where they are presumably unable to call 119 themselves, but the fire department tries calling back to see if it was an actual emergency?
Then if nobody answers, instead of rushing over there, they try again in a little while?
Needless to say I went with a Ring alarm, which is £8/month, and will notify me immediately, and I can call the police myself.
There is even a parable about this. Several of them, actually. :D
In some countries calling emergency "for fun" can have legal consequences.
also, if you do, you still don't drive off road on a snow covered mountain.
maps surely can help here.