Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Medicine Apple Hardware

Apple Watch Fall Detection Credited With Saving Unresponsive Arizona Man (appleinsider.com) 43

The Apple Watch's Fall Detection feature is being credited as helping save an unresponsive man in Chandler, Arizona. AppleInsider reports: Fall Detection, introduced on the Apple Watch Series 4, can detect if a user takes a hard fall and will alert local emergency services if they don't respond within 60 seconds. The potentially life-saving capabilities of that feature were on display on April 23, when police dispatchers in Chandler received a 911 call from an automated voice, according to local media outlet KTAR. The auto-generated message indicated that an Apple Watch wearer had fallen and was not responding, and also provided authorities with the exact latitude and longitude of the man's location. When officers and the Chandler Fire Department showed up, they found that the man had fainted and collapsed.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Apple Watch Fall Detection Credited With Saving Unresponsive Arizona Man

Comments Filter:
  • Buffalo New York (Score:3, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday June 05, 2020 @04:53PM (#60150596)

    What about the guy in Buffalo New York who was pushed by police and they walked by him ignoring his severe brain injury? He needed an Apple watch too.

    • Wasn’t that a woman? Or am I thinking of a different incident like the one you’re referencing?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      In his case the app instantly evaluated the situation and chose instead to conceal him from the closest emergency services before they could finish him off. Apple is just that good.

    • What about the guy in Buffalo New York who was pushed by police and they walked by him ignoring his severe brain injury?

      That's actually a really good case as well where the Apple Watch would have called 911 - then very likely they wouldn't have walked by him for as long, as emergency services would have asked what was up with the unresponsive man who had police all around him.

      After all, there are not going to be cameras on everyone all the time so you need something like this as personal backup especially i

    • Bad timing indeed.

  • My mother has a Philips Lifeline gadget that she wears around her neck. If she falls and doesn't get up again within thirty seconds, or if she pushes the button on the unit at any time, their call center is alerted. They can talk to her through that unit, and if she doesn't answer them or says that she's hurt or can't get up, they phone me to tell me that there is an incident reported or they phone an ambulance depending on what she says (or doesn't say). The unit also reports her gps coordinates if she

    • The difference being that itâ(TM)s more expensive than the watch and requires a subscription that appears to be nearly $50 a month.

      Of course, it probably doesnâ(TM)t need to be charged every night, but it sure is pricy, and lacks a lot of features of the watch.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        That's true, but it also has a dedicated call center who is used to dealing with seniors and who address her by name when they answer a call. Their purpose is to find out what's wrong and arrange for her to get assistance when it's required. The gadget that she has is designed for seniors who aren't familiar with technology -- it has only one button and is dead simple to use and is waterproof and almost indestructable.

        It runs for about ten days on a charge and it tells her (literally tells her, meaning t

  • Just putting this one man in contrast to the 110.479(*) that have died from complications with Sars-Cov-2 that will put this one lucky man in proportion to 100.000 unlucky ones.

    (*) that we know about .. based on official numbers however those are mostly lower than the difference compared to average mortality of previous years.

  • How is this news, it's been about 2 years since this was released? It was blatant marketing from the start, a device promising to save old people from falling at night while going to the bathroom, only it needed to be on it's charging pod every night... So, for the intersection of old people who 1. Have enough dexterity to remove charge refit 2. Can remember to charge it nightly 3. Survive watch-less night bathroom excursions 4. Fall when they are actually wearing the watch... It can save lives! The above

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      It was big news 2 years ago, then Apple stopped publicizing it because it was becoming a bit too common and un-newsworthy. There were a bunch of comments about younger people (the feature default depends on the age of the user - I think if you're over 50, fall detection defaults to on, while under 50 it defaults to off on the assumption said younger person would be doing activities that trip up the fall detection. It is possible to change it and enable it, if desired, or disable it.

      I think it's gotten so co

  • I got my mother an Apple Watch explicitly for the fall detection, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

    Apple watches with this feature have been out for 2 years. If this is really the first story of it paying off then the story isn't "it might have saved someone!" it's "why isn't it saving way more people??".

  • OMG, a $600 piece of hardware is working exactly as expected! I should put it in the news!

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H.L. Mencken

Working...