'Find My' pinpoints location of crash victim stranded overnight

AppleInsider

On Monday, Apple's Find My feature helped rescuers find a woman after she was in a car crash in California and plummeted 200 feet down a hill.

Find My helped save a woman in California

The San Bernardino County Fire Department made a Facebook post on Monday, sharing the news of the rescue.

Firefighters were dispatched to a reported traffic collision on Highway 18. The 911 caller said they found a vehicle over the side of the highway. Rescue crews found it about 200 feet below the roadway.

Paramedics found a woman with severe injuries and used advanced life support while other firefighters set up a rope system to lift the victim and rescuers. Once raised, an ambulance brought the woman to a local trauma center.

The location of the accident. Source: San Bernardino County Fire

The Fire Department said she had likely been in her crashed vehicle overnight after leaving a family gathering. Family members got concerned after trying to contact the woman and used Apple's Find My feature to track her location.

Apple's technology also helped people in a separate incident earlier in December. Two people got stranded 300 feet into a canyon in Southern California and used the new Emergency SOS via Satellite on an iPhone 14 to contact emergency responders.

Fortunately, they had only suffered mild to moderate injuries and could pull themselves from the vehicle. First responders were able to deploy a helicopter to airlift the pair out of the canyon and to a local hospital.

The feature that helped save them, Emergency SOS via Satellite, was announced by Apple at WWDC 2022 and released it in November. It's a combination of an iOS app, hardware within the iPhone 14 range, and the network of Globalstar satellites.

It helps people when they're out of reach of cellular and Wi-Fi networks, and included in iPhone 14 models and the latest Apple Watch lineup. Users are asked a series of questions to describe the emergency and packages location data and the medical ID to send to emergency responders.

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coolfactor

Would it be ironic if she was distracted by her iPhone, which caused her to crash? Glad she's safe now.

danox

Hwy 18 to Crestline, California….

lkrupp

So we got these reports of Find My and Crash Detections savings lives along with complaints from first responders about false crash detections and false falling call-ins from iPhones. Apple in the damned if you do and damed if you don’t box once again.

Rogue01

coolfactor said:

Would it be ironic if she was distracted by her iPhone, which caused her to crash? Glad she's safe now.

Highway 18 is in the mountains, so likely snow and ice and driving too fast for weather conditions led to the crash.

radarthekat

lkrupp said:

So we got these reports of Find My and Crash Detections savings lives along with complaints from first responders about false crash detections and false falling call-ins from iPhones. Apple in the damned if you do and damed if you don’t box once again.

My watch thought it detected a fall today when I put down a dumbbell a bit too hard.  Glad I noticed it in the loud gym before it called emergency services.  It was the vibration that alerted me.  

bloggerblog

I used FindMy to track my lost checked-in luggage during this season’s travel mayhem, it was left behind in TX when it was supposed to be in our plane to CA. The annoying part is that I was able to see that it was right next to our plane before take off and assumed that it made it on the flight, but it didn’t. 

Anyway after finding out that it was still in TX, I was able to see it on my FindMy app move from one terminal to another. I called the AA office and informed them of its whereabouts, but because of all the craziness I had to go to our destination airport and open a ticket. I was able to watch it move again from one terminal to another, then on the tarmac. Woke up one morning and could see it in San Diego, I quickly got into my car and drove to the airport. There was a sea of luggage, as far as the eye could see, I used the directions feature and I was able to get to it in less than a minute. Truly amazing. I am certain had I not tossed an AirTag in my luggage, the airport would’ve taken days before they reached out to us, and probably the luggage would still be in TX or would just be lost. AirTags are worth every penny, I’ve been using them to track luggage, my bikes, backpacks, etc. 

gatorguy

Curious... Doesn't crash detection work on older iPhones too, and if so I wonder why that wasn't activated so she could be found much faster instead of spending the night trapped?