iPhone 14 collision detection responsible for 5x increase in false 911 calls at Bonnaroo Festival

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Apple’s new collision detection feature on the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch is responsible for an influx of 911 calls from the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee last weekend. According to first responders, there have been about five times as many false 911 calls this year compared to previous years of the festival.

This year’s Bonnaroo Festival was held last weekend in Manchester, Tennessee, and attracted more than 80,000 people. That crowd size would put a strain on first responders almost anywhere, but Apple’s Collision Detection feature would have made things worse this year.

Local media outlet WKRN spoke with Scott LeDuc, director of the Coffee County 911 Communication Center, who explained that the fake 911 calls were triggered by festival-goers dancing and partying in the crowd.

First responders contacted Apple during the festival to report the influx of false positive 911 calls they were receiving due to Crash Detection. LeDuc said Apple had offered to send engineers to the festival to help manage the situation and diagnose the problem, but the two parties were able to do so over the phone instead.

As part of efforts to manage the burden of collision detection, Manchester Police Service has encouraged spectators to turn off collision detection altogether. According to LeDec, these messages reduced the number of calls they received by “40 to 60 percent”.

MPD responded to several accidental 911 calls in Bonnaroo. It’s likely that these calls are the result of Collision Detection Mode, a new feature on Apple’s iPhones. Be careful and consider disabling this feature on your phone until Bonnaroo ends.

Despite the added burden of a 5x increase in bogus 911 calls, LeDuc said first responders were still able to respond to every call and handle the situation without impacting actual emergencies.

“Our employees really stepped up, because first responders are always really engaged in the performance of their duties and they did. And we haven’t had any situations where we couldn’t help someone because of the number of calls. If someone dials 911, we need to answer the phone and we need to make sure we are following all protocols to make sure everyone is safe before closing that call. The Manchester Police Department has done an amazing job of picking people up because you don’t know if it’s a real emergency or if it’s just a pocket dial.

Crash Detection debuted on the iPhone 14, Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE, and Apple Watch Ultra last year. Since then, Apple has repeatedly adjusted the feature’s algorithm in an effort to reduce the number of false positives. Crash Detection has been accused of making fake 911 calls from skiers, amusement parks, and more.

At the same time, Crash Detection also worked as expected in a number of different cases:

The purpose of Crash Detection is to detect when you have been involved in a serious car accident and contact emergency services on your behalf. The feature gives you 20 seconds to respond to a notification and then triggers the Emergency SOS feature to call emergency services. It will then also share your exact location with the dispatchers

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