2024-07-06 01:05:31
That night, two phones rang two seconds apart in the operators’ hall of the Vilnius branch of the General Emergency Center. The operators Adam and Inga who answered the calls heard automated audio messages informing them that the iPhone user had been involved in a serious traffic accident and the approximate coordinates. No one was talking to the operators, but people’s voices could be heard in the background asking if an ambulance was being called. The coordinates indicated in both reports coincided.
Adam was the first to complete and transmit electronic messages to the EMS, police and fire services, and then both operators attempted to call the phone numbers from which the automated messages were received – and, if possible, verify the circumstances. No one answered the calls.
At that time, another call was received in the operator room. The woman who called reported a traffic accident in Vilnius, at the intersection of Mykolos Lietuvios and Ukmergė streets. According to the informant who was passing by and stopped at the scene of the accident, two people were injured when their car collided with the tractor. The injured could not get out of the car, they needed the help of firefighters. The location of the incident coincided with the location data of the automated messages that were just received.
After finishing this conversation and supplementing the transmitted messages to the emergency services, the operator Inga finally managed to call one of the numbers. The woman who answered confirmed that she had been involved in a traffic accident and that her husband was trapped in the car.
The services that went to the scene of the traffic accident freed the trapped man and took him to the hospital. After talking with the officers, the injured woman was also taken to the hospital for examination. The Latvian citizen driving the truck was not injured.
This incident took place in the city, so even well after midnight there were passers-by who stopped and called 112. Had this been a more remote location, the only immediate reports of the disaster might have come from the victims’ iPhones .
The accident detection function in Apple’s smart devices (phones and watches) began to be implemented in the fall of 2022. Motion sensors and their matching algorithms react to impacts that indicate that the user of the device has been involved in a traffic accident. If the user does not respond to the signals transmitted by the device to check his awareness, the device automatically calls the emergency services number 112 after 10 seconds.
Not all such calls work. The emergency services that went to the indicated place more than once did not find a traffic accident. There have been cases when only the iPhone that transmitted the message was found at the scene, which responded to the impact by falling to the ground. However, in addition to such false reports, there are also real traffic accidents, such as the one described, when people need prompt assistance from all services.
The General Help Center would like to ask owners of Apple devices to be alert and responsive to the sounds and messages displayed by their devices. When the device communicates with the General Assistance Center, it is possible to immediately inform the operator what assistance is required at the scene, and if urgent assistance is not required, it can be notified that it is not needed.
2024-07-06 01:05:31