Sophisticated features in the iPhone 14 managed to save men and women who were in a car accident and fell into a ravine. The features in question are Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via Satellite which are available on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro.
According to a report from the Montrose Search & Rescue Team, a car with two occupants had an accident on the Angeles Forest Highway in Angeles National Forest. The car then derailed and continued down the canyon about 100 meters from the road.
An iPhone 14 carried by one of the passengers managed to detect this accident thanks to the Crash Detection feature. The collision was serious enough to release the front bumper of the car.
But because the accident site was in the middle of a forest, they couldn't contact the emergency services or the SAR team because there was no signal. After getting out of the car, the two accident victims decided to try the Emergency SOS feature via Satellite.
This feature allows users to contact emergency services even though there is no signal because it utilizes a connection from Apple's partner satellite. After successfully connecting, the iPhone will send the user's location and some other information.
This message is then received by Apple's relay center and then forwarded to the relevant parties, in this case the LA County firefighters, police, and the Montrose SAR team.
After receiving the location of the accident victims, the rescue team was immediately deployed. Using helicopters, the rescue team was able to lift the victims out of the ravine and transport them to a local hospital.
"The call center provided us with the victim's accurate latitude and longitude," the Montrose SAR team said in a tweet, as quoted by TechCrunch, Thursday (15/12/2022).
"Air Rescue 5 helicopters managed to find the victim and brought in paramedics. The paramedics knew that the patients, men and women in their 20s, had mild to moderate injuries," he continued.
The Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via Satellite features are available for all iPhone 14 users. The SOS feature can be activated when a user is stuck in an emergency situation and there is no cellular or Wi-Fi connection available.
Currently, the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature is only available in North America, France, Germany, Ireland and the UK. Not yet known when this feature will be available in more countries.