Video: Apple iPhone 14 and new watches will (they say) detect when you’ve had a car crash

The new Apple iPhone 14, and new Apple Watches, will ship with a feature called Crash Detection – claiming to do just what it says on the label: detect when you’ve experienced a car crash.

In a glossy video demonstrating the technology, Apple describes the new feature as one they “hope you’ll never need”.

Revealed as part of Apple’s big annual September hardware event, the new feature follows the Fall Detection feature that debuted with the Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018, which added the ability to recognise a potentially harmful fall and automatically call emergency services if the wearer doesn’t tap an on-screen “I’m OK” button.

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The new Crash Detection feature works in a similar fashion, using onboard sensors in either the iPhone 14 or Apple Watch, such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, microphones, barometers and real-world data – the latter quickly sorted by algorithms to match against the newly detected incident – to determine whether it should alert emergency services.

As with Fall Detection, the feature will give you a moment to decide whether help is needed.

As you might expect, the sensors described above can detect sudden changes in speed and direction, and even the specific sounds and changes in cabin air pressure caused by the explosive deployment of airbags. Of course, the familiar external sounds of crashes are also detected and assessed against existing data.

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According to Apple, that real-world assessment ability is built on one million hours of driving and crash data.

A number of modern vehicles, particularly in North America but increasingly so in Australia, offer integrated systems that use the vehicle’s own sensors to detect situations that call for emergency services – but, uniquely, Apple’s Crash Detection extends the concept to the many owners of vehicles not so equipped.

Note: if the below video does not begin at the correct moment, you can skip ahead to 2:46 for the segment on Crash Detection.