After driving his car 400 feet off of a cliff, a man's iPhone takes over and saves his life
A man drove off a cliff in California and as horrific as that sounds, the driver's iPhone 14 helped rescue him and saved his life as the accident left him bleeding from his head. According to CBS Los Angeles (via AppleInsider), the car plunged 400 feet off of Mt. Wilson Road. The Crescenta Valley Station of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department confirmed that it was in touch with an iPhone communication center at around 10:30 pm this past Friday.
The combination of the iPhone 14's Crash Detection feature and Emergency SOS via Satellite helped alert rescuers to the location of the driver. Without having any cellular service in the area where the accident occurred, the iPhone sent out an emergency text message via satellite to an Apple iPhone communication center. This text included the GPS coordinates of the car. After the text was sent, the live operator at the call center alerted the closest law enforcement agency, which was Crescenta Valley Station.
When the emergency responders got to the scene of the accident, they heard a man screaming for help and located the man and the vehicle 400 feet below the road. Two rescuers were lowered by helicopter to hoist the man and lift him to safety. Steve Goldsworthy, the Rescue Operations Leader of Montrose Search and Rescue, said, "He was 400 feet down in a canyon with virtually no way out. So, who knows when, or if, we would've located him?"
RESCUE: At 10:51pm on Fri we were alerted to a car 400’ over a cliff by the driver’s iPhone 14 crash detection. Location was Mt Wilson Rd. After locating him we guided in an @LACoFireAirOps copter. Suffered head trauma. @LASDHQ@CVLASD@KCBSKCALDesk@NBCLA@ABC7@FOXLA@cnnbrkpic.twitter.com/jXdpuDL7Hk
— Mike Leum (@Resqman) July 22, 2023
Goldsworthy said that the driver's iPhone 14 handled everything. "The location that we got from the iPhone activation was spot on. It was basically his phone on its own, calling for help on his behalf." The iPhone 14 quite literally saved the driver's life said Mike Leum, one of the members of the Montrose Search and Rescue team. "I believe that if we didn't have that good location information in a timely manner, he probably would've bled out," Leum said. "I kept telling him how lucky he was."
Both Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via Satellite are features available exclusively on the iPhone 14 series and will probably be included with every new iPhone line moving forward.
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