According to reports from Colorado, Utah, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and other popular skiing areas, the feature has occasionally confused a skier or snowboarder falling down as a car crash. The feature is intended to detect a severe car crash and automatically call emergency services if a user does not respond to the device within 20 seconds.
Apple does not go into detail about the improvements, but the company has been working to enhance Crash Detection after emergency dispatchers in a number of U.S. states and Canada complained that the feature was causing a spike in erroneous 911 calls from skiers and snowboarders during the winter. After iOS 16.1.2 in November and iOS 16.3.1 last month, this is the third update with improvements to Crash Detection. All iPhone 14 models and the most recent Apple Watch models came with crash detection when it was released last year.
It’s uncertain whether the most recent optimizations will completely fix the problem. We will have to wait until next winter to find out if iOS 16.4 reduces false 911 calls since the U.S. and Canadian ski seasons are coming to an end.