Moshers at a huge rock festival accidentally made over 700 emergency smartwatch calls, as the old ‘theme park’ problem rears its head again
Switch off your smartwatch's collision detection the next time you go to a theme park – or a moshpit.
Fifteen years ago, I was no stranger to a moshpit. I was 18, and without the responsibilities nor the creeping aches of a mostly desk-bound 33-year-old journalist, I could throw myself into these mock-brawls at rock concerts with reckless abandon.
Clad in my best (or tattiest) black, baggy Iron Maiden T-shirt, I moshed at any gig I could, from obscure hardcore garage bands in tiny metal-music pubs, all the way to huge festival concerts for the likes of Metallica, entering moshes with hundreds of participants.
They might look scary on the outside, but even if you've never been in one before, most moshpits are friendly affairs: no-one's out to (seriously) hurt anyone else, and if anyone falls down, they get hauled up straight away. On many occasions, I'd see a hand holding a shoe, phone, or hoodie stick straight into the air in the middle of the pit, signaling to the owner that they've lost something. Moshpits everywhere, no matter the size of the crowd, share an unwritten code of conduct.
Unfortunately, your technology can't understand that this is all fun and games. All the best Apple watches, and most of the best Android smartwatches, offer features designed to detect falls and collisions, notifying either a designated contact or placing a call to emergency services, but these features can be accidentally triggered too. The Guardian reports that during the annual Download Festival, a three-day event in the UK that's considered by many to be a Mecca for metal fans, around 700 accidental emergency calls get made on average as a result of moshing.
The festival took place last weekend, from 13-15 June, and the wasted time for emergency services is presumably still being assessed.
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Before Download began in earnest last weekend, the local Leicestershire Police force took to social media to remind rock fans to either take off their smartwatches or turn off the feature. On Facebook, the police force wrote:
"The tech assumed that people in mosh pits had been in a collision, causing 999 contacts and abandoned 999 calls.
"All those calls had to be assessed, with three outbound call attempts completed to ensure there is no threat, risk or harm, taking our contact handlers away from answering true emergency calls.
"#HelpUsHelpYou by answering our callbacks from hidden numbers to let us know you are safe. We also recommend switching on ‘airplane mode’ or disabling emergency alerts on your wearable tech."
When Crash Detection features were first introduced by Apple in 2022, headlines abounded about accidental callouts to theme parks: one BBC article highlighted Apple Watches as responsible for six different emergency callouts to a single theme park in Cincinatti, Ohio.
However, it's not all bad; for every headline about accidental triggers or false callouts, there's also been one about how someone's benefited from a smartwatch's emergency features. We'd call that a net positive overall.
If you're about to rock, we don't just salute you: we also encourage you to turn off Crash Detection or similar features on your devices. For Wear OS, you'll find these features under the Personal Safety tab, while Apple Watch users will need to go to Settings > SOS > Crash Detection.
