[bitcurious]

The average age of a car in the states is 12.5 years. Mandating the tech in cars means that only a small fraction of comparatively well off Americans will benefit from crash detection. Rolling it out in smartphones democratizes this safety feature to a great extent.

Plus, there are pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, etc., who can crash.

[dahfizz]

Do we have evidence that this feature is actually providing benefit? So much so that we as a society can't possibly wait 10 years for it to be ubiquitous in cars?

Was it common before to get in a serious accident but nobody calls 911?

If a call goes through when there was a legitimate accident, do the 911 operators even care, or do they assume all these automated calls are false positives?

I think it's likely that this feature does more harm than good by ddosing the 911 infrastructure.

[taeric]

Per the story, it didn't overwhelm them. It caused an increase, but they were able to field all calls. Such that you would need something other than this to show it caused actual harm.

You also don't have to search too hard to see that it has, in fact, been useful. First news search I found: https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/15/police-officer-apple-watch-fa... I see no reason to think there aren't others.

[ngai_aku]

Personal anecdote, but a friend of mine fell asleep at the wheel and rolled her car on a quiet road. Her watch called 911 while she was unconscious. I can't say for certain how long it would've taken for someone else to report the crash.

My wife went out and bought a watch the next day.

[joenot443]

I think conversations like this are difficult because in an indirect way, we're asking people to quantify the tradeoff of a human life vs mass human inconvenience. If the feature caused false-positives at a 1000:1 rate of real (unreported) accidents, would it be worth saving one life for 1000 wasted 911 calls? How about 10,000?

I don't have a confident answer for this at all, I think it's almost entirely subjective. There are folks who would confidently say that ANY amount of mass inconvenience is worth saving one life. There are others that would confidently say the opposite. Much more thoughtful people than I have spent a long time debating the topic on LessWrong, it's a pretty rich area of discussion.

[dahfizz]

It goes beyond inconvenience, IMO.

First, there are the direct costs. If false auto-calls are clogging up 911 resources, then the taxpayers need to pay for more operators and infrastructure. This money could be used to "save lives" elsewhere.

Then there are second order effects such as lowering the signal/noise ratio of 911 calls. If operators get used to ignoring the automated calls, then the feature becomes a pure cost on society with little/no benefit.

[recursive]

Seatbelts were mandated some time ago. This was done even though most cars were old. Then, time passed. Now, all cars have seat belts.

Most crashes have at least one car involved.