WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Technology is another great tool to help you in your time of need. That’s a message Sedgwick County Dispatch is spreading with an effort to educate the public about a potential life-saving feature.
On Dec. 11, the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office received an alert from Apple Crash Detection letting them know about a crash near Goddard.
“It comes into 911 as a pre-recorded message saying an Apple Device has been in a crash. And then it sends us the coordinates as well,” said Jackie Blackwell,911 Workforce Specialist at Sedgwick County.
Blackwell said crash detection has been used for about 70 911 calls so far this year.
When a crash happens, dispatchers will answer and hear the Apple alert like a normal call.
The pre-recorded call dispatchers will hear a message that says, “The owner of this Apple Watch has been in a severe car crash and is not responding to their watch.”
“With that, we also get a ping from the phone that’s calling us. So we can really narrow down where that phone call is coming from,” said Blackwell.
Apple will then give dispatchers the latitude, longitude, and an estimated search radius.
“Once we receive those coordinates, we can put them into the computer system as an unknown accident, and that will trigger the dispatcher to get an officer started as soon as we possibly can,” said Blackwell.
Blackwell said dispatchers are trained to handle Apple crash calls like normal 911 calls.
Crash detection is available on Apple Watch models, including Series 8 and newer, Apple Watch SE (2nd generation), Apple Watch Ultra or later, and on iPhone 14 and later models.
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