> How would you alternatively design a system that calls emergency services in a crash?
I'd put it in the car. Make it use the same sensor as airbag deployment.
I'd put it in the car. Make it use the same sensor as airbag deployment.
I'm pretty sure that this iPhone feature has and will save lives, and it may also risk them due to resource mismanagement.
I think this may be another job for Bayes. Apple's algorithm may be very accurate at detecting car crashes when there are car crashes, but most of the time there are not car crashes. As a result it may actually be super inaccurate at the 'population' level. So while it may have the reach, the incidence of false positives and the infrastructure misallocation may yield worse outcomes than not having the system in the first place.
Definitely. I think it is difficult to assess the scale of the issue here without any raw numbers. In terms of resource allocation, this quote in the article seems to suggest that they weren't so stretched thin that they had any issues.
>Our employees really stepped up, as first responders always do really step up in the line of duty and they did. And we didn’t have any situation where we couldn’t help someone because of the amount of calls.
A good individual idea not always turns out to be great when taken at a population level
"Apple will have to make the calculation actual lives saved vs. useless dispatches"
The personal phone is the best place to fit this feature because it already has cellular communications and can work in any mode of transportation.
Make a USB cigarette lighter charger which also has crash sensors that the phone can use.
(and/or put them in dashcams)
(or aftermarket stereo/infotainment systems)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall
And many modern cars have it as well in the USA. My BMW has it.
iPhones do have approximate location available at all times, via wi-fi scanning/databases and tower ~triangulation. This wouldn't be good enough to infer any sort of acute acceleration/deceleration.
All of that said, none of it helps if you were sitting at a red light for 3 minutes before being rear-ended.
This is, all told, a fairly useful feature that has historically been accomplished only with dedicated hardware.
Such that I'm surprised at all of the indignation here. I remember when the watch came out, that there were many stories on how it had helped folks. Seems a straight line from those to false positives. There are probably also false negatives, such that the feature has work to do in both directions.
Put another way; if an emergency team arrives late to another accident because they were tied up on a false positive from an iphone and that results in less effective care, what happens? Do we just front the bill for more emergency workers? Do we hold apple accountable for false positives? Do we hold the user accountable for false positives (I guarantee most people are gonna start turning it off then).
Seems like emergency response centers are a little mixed in how they feel about the feature. But this last point is especially important as to why false positives are pretty irresponsible.
"An automated call from Crash Detection could cost responders as much as $10,000, and they have a limited budget."
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/09/apple-crash-detec...
Again, they should improve it. And reporting and asking for changes makes sense. The disdain on this post is baffling to me, though. You don't have to search hard to find cases of this feature providing tangible help to people.
If you have solid data showing that it is overwhelming places, that changes things. So far, it has not been reported to be doing that.
I know you mean well, but if this is that hard for you to understand then you aren't even trying to consider responders' wasted time or effort. Until the majority of automated calls are verifiable emergencies, this is adding more noise than signal. The handful of times it gets it right puts it a step above a broken clock in terms of usefulness. For what response costs in human capital, it needs to do better than occasionally getting it right. "If it saves one life..." isn't good enough when you're driving responders to apathy and exhaustion; others will suffer from their lack of attention.
Really, welfare checks borne from vaguely-substantiated malfunctions are a job for friends, not emergency services.
For one, you haven't established that the majority are not verifiable emergencies. You are asserting that it can't possibly be the case that this is providing real value, as it is.
You also have not established that it causes a substantial increase in costs for most municipalities. Again, quoting how much a search and rescue can cost up to, in a place with many ski resorts, does little to actually convince me of good faith discussions here.
For places that have a convention or festival, I can already assume that they will have an increase in everything because of that. Per this very story, they were emphatically not overwhelmed. It was an increase, and is notable such that it is best if it is addressed.
But I see very little ways of framing the doom and gloom posts here other than FUD.
The cost of a false negative could be a life.
Improved protocols and better algorithms from Apple will probably help tremendously with false positives.