Apple announces Crash Detection, its newest Emergency feature

Driving could be fun and relaxing but, at the same time, unpredictable and dangerous. Your car might suddenly lose grip, or another car might hit you while you drive in your lane. And if the speeds were too high, your life might even be in danger after the crash.

Well, with its new Apple Watch Series 8 and iPhone 14, Apple also just introduced a new feature called Crash Detection, and according to the company, its new Emergency function can save your life.

According to Apple, if you experience a severe car crash, the Apple Watch Series 8 and the iPhone 14 will detect the impact and, after 10 seconds, will automatically notify your emergency contacts and provide them with your current location.

But how can the Apple Watch Series 8 and the new iPhone detect a car crash? Well, Apple’s new smartwatch and iPhone have two new motion sensors: an improved 3-axis gyroscope and a high-G-force accelerometer. According to the tech giant, the accelerometer can measure up to 256 G’s and has a four times faster sampling rate — over 3,000 times a second. All this enables it to detect the precise moment of the impact. And when you combine the new sensors with, as Apple stated, an “advanced sensor algorithm,” you get the Crash Detection feature.

Apple’s new emergency function detects crashes in cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. According to the company, it runs and processes data only when you are driving and around the time of a possible accident. Furthermore, the entire information gets processed on your devices, so Apple doesn’t collect it on its servers.

In its announcement, Apple stated that it studied years of reports made at state-of-the-art crash test labs and that its algorithm has been trained on over 1 million hours of real-world driving and crash data.