As the Wall Street Journal reports, the iPhone 14 is somewhat overzealous in detecting an accident. The feature also sounds the alarm in cases that are recreational and where there is no danger.
Accident detection automatically calls 911 should you be in a car accident or fall off your bike. The integrated acceleration sensors together with Apple’s algorithms decide in such an incident whether an emergency call is automatically sent.
However, this also happens on a roller coaster. Apple engineers may not have had enough free time to take an iPhone 14 on a big ride, but there are numerous reports from an amusement park where iPhones constantly sound the alarm. So the iPhone probably can’t distinguish between brief high acceleration peaks in an accident and sustained stresses on a roller coaster ride.
When activating the function, you still have ten seconds to cancel the emergency call, but since the iPhone is probably still in your pocket and the ride is not yet over, it might be difficult to activate the cancel button in time.
The solution is this: either don’t take the iPhone into the roller coaster at all or switch on flight mode beforehand. This also deactivates the emergency call function because the radio connections are switched off.
