Crash detection technology helps save man’s life after tumbling off cliff – NBC Los Angeles

[ad_1]

Los Angeles County Search and Rescue went on a perilous search effort Friday night, trying to rescue a driver who plunged off a cliff in the Angeles National Forest.

And now, search leaders say they may never have found him alive if they didn’t have the help of new technology on the iPhone.

A driver fell off a cliff into a wooded area Friday night in the Angeles National Forest.

Another team member and I went the other way, said Mike Leum with LA County Search and Rescue. After spotting the bent guard rail and missing bark from the trees, he descended hundreds of feet on a rope, hoping to find the injured driver. And then at 400 feet we hit bottom, and then we found his car in the creek and he ejected next to the car.

He had a big gash on his head and he was actively bleeding, so we had to stop the bleeding, bandage him, Leum said. He was able to be hoisted into the helicopter.

But the only reason Search and Rescue was able to locate the injured driver Friday night was because of new crash detection technology on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro and the latest Apple Watch.

There’s nothing to download, said Steve Goldsworthy with LA County Search and Rescue.

Goldsworthy is the Director of Technology for LASD Search and Rescue.

If you have an iPhone 14 or I believe it’s an iPhone 14 Pro, it’s already there, it’s already built in, Goldsworthy said.

Here’s how it works: If you’re in a serious crash, crash detection will kick in and instantly connect you to the nearest 911 call center.

That feature came out last fall, Goldsworthy said.

But if you don’t have cell service, like the driver injured on Friday, the phone will still call for help via satellite.

The satellite can locate the iPhone, telling rescue teams where to look.

In late June, he helped find a woman who broke her leg hiking in Tujunga, and may have saved this man on Friday, too.

Without the iPhone’s SOS service, I don’t know when or if we would ever have found it, Leum said.

Leum has been in search and rescue for three decades. When he started he said he was happy to have a pager. But in 2023, he’s thankful for his new high-tech teammate.

Getting to him in a timely manner is what saved him, Leum said.

Accident detection technology is already saving lives.

[ad_2]