There are many stories about the fall detection feature of Apple Watch saving people’s lives, including this one and this one. Unless you are at least 65 years old, the fall detection feature is turned off by default. About 6 months ago, I decided to manually activate fall detection on my watch to see what would happen. Fall detection was activated twice during this time.
The first time was when I was playing catch with my daughter before softball practice. Since I’m right-handed, I wear both my watch and my fielder’s glove on my left side. I misjudged a low throw and caught the softball in the palm of my hand which activated fall detection. I suspected that it was the combination of the impact of the ball jarring my hand/wrist as well as the downward motion of my arm as the impact occurred.
The second time was when my daughter and I were roughhousing at home. She hit my left arm, and while I do not recall making any significant downward motion, it activated fall detection. Here’s the full message after stitching together 2 screenshots:
After pressing the “I’m OK” button, it asks the user to confirm whether or not a fall occurred. I assume that this is to help Apple improve its fall detection algorithm.
So far, I’ve had 2 false positive activations and zero true positives, so I think Apple’s decision to deactivate fall detection in people younger than 65 is justified. However, if you’d like to turn on the feature, see the Apple support page for details.
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