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Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

seattletimes.com

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Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#41

Post by FireBeyond »

wtracy wrote: post #30
FireBeyond wrote: post #25

Life Alert, horrendous as their ads may be, would probably be surprised to hear that it's only now that you're finding a "device which can contact emergency services in the event of an accident" so life changing. As might OnStar, etc.

All of those services rely on manual intervention from staff in a call center. If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.

I do have a horse in the race. Not the one you might think, but as a paramedic/firefighter, I'm not sure you can argue that "attempts to verify (human or otherwise) that there is a medical incident before dispatching EMS" is automatically worse than "calls 911 from the device automatically".

> If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.

They all have (see my sibling comment about Automatic Fall Detection), and I agree.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#42

Post by skyyler »

FireBeyond wrote: post #36
Izkata wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. All those other services require the person to hit a button to trigger it, which they can't do while unconscious. The Apple watch called automatically on its own.

No. All those services absolutely offer Automatic Fall Detection: https://www.theseniorlist.com/medical-alert-systems/best/fal... And OnStar has it easier, with existing collision detection.

Interesting, how much does the Apple Watch fall detection cost monthly?

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#43

Post by segmondy »

swayvil wrote: post #8

My friend was digging a hole in her garden. Her watch asked her, "are you ok?".

Digging is a very strenuous activity as well as shoveling. Anytime there's a major snow storm, enough people die from shoveling. So it probably detected that she was very stressed.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#44

Post by derefr »

president wrote: post #15

Curious - does Apple Watch call 911 if you flop onto bed and start napping away?

It's probably more about instantaneous acceleration. Nothing you can do with your own two arms and legs will ever cause you to experience a deceleration as hard as what happens when you fall from a standing position onto a hard surface. (Unless you ran full-tilt into a brick wall, I suppose.)

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#45

Post by Izkata »

bt848 wrote: post #32
amiantos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name this competitor that had fall detection ('for ages') that automatically messages emergency services for you?

Garmin. You know, the brand that is 100x more popular among bicyclists.

This reads as though Apple did it first: https://fortune.com/2019/01/07/garmin-vivoactive-cellular-sm...

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#46

Post by FireBeyond »

skyyler wrote: post #42
FireBeyond wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. All those services absolutely offer Automatic Fall Detection: https://www.theseniorlist.com/medical-alert-systems/best/fal... And OnStar has it easier, with existing collision detection.

Interesting, how much does the Apple Watch fall detection cost monthly?

$10/month if you factor in the need for a cellular plan for the watch?

$15/month for a fall detection device vs $399 + $10/month buys a lot of months. Yes, I know the Apple Watch does more, but I wasn't the one who tried to make the comparison.

Does the Apple Watch stay on the phone with you until EMS arrives? Is it capable of giving medical information to dispatch?

Another "Apple was the first to do this!"... "No it wasn't"... "Well, the cost is different!"... circumlocution.

I could care less, either way. Whichever device gives me less false positives (but not false negatives) works best for me as a first responder.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#49

Post by paulddraper »

FireBeyond wrote: post #25

Life Alert, horrendous as their ads may be, would probably be surprised to hear that it's only now that you're finding a "device which can contact emergency services in the event of an accident" so life changing. As might OnStar, etc.

Ah, but they don't sell chiche phones, laptops, and watches :)

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#50

Post by thanatos_dem »

gesman wrote: post #38

Can Apple watch be programmed to call relative in case of hard fall / unresponsiveness like this? I have elderly father in Eastern Europe and he would really benefit from this.

From the article:

> The Apple Watch also alerted Gabe Burdett that his dad had fallen.

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