Apple Watch Crash Detection saves life of man just a week after buying it

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He'd only had it a week before it saved his life.

Introducing Crash Detection | iPhone 14 Pro | Apple
(Image credit: Apple)

The Apple Watch's new Crash Detection feature appears to have saved a life, and it only took a week to do it.

The Indianapolis man says he only bought the Apple Watch on a whim at his local Best Buy just a week before he found himself hurt in a crash. His car rammed into a telephone pole at around 70 mph, with his Apple Watch calling for help once the dust settled.

The man says that he was strapped into his seat and trying to stay conscious when he realized that his Apple Watch had called emergency services for him.

A close shave

"If it weren't for this watch, who knows how long it would have been for help to get to me," the driver said in an interview with ABC World News Now. The first responders were with him in around five minutes thanks to his Apple Watch.

Thankfully the man was recovered from his wrecked car and taken to the hospital, and beyond needing corrective glasses, he's expected to recover fully.

After emailing Apple CEO Tim Cook to tell him the news, the man received a response from Cook saying that it's stories like these that are the reason Crash Detection was developed.

Crash Detection is available on the new Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Series 8, and refreshed Apple Watch SE and is perhaps the best Apple Watch feature we all hope we never have to use.

Crash Detection is also available on Apple's latest iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max. Some reports suggest that the technology still requires work, with Apple already asking for feedback. But there's no doubt it worked exactly as advertised for this lucky man.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.