A YouTube blogger conducted a full crash test of the iPhone 14/Pro series' car crash detection feature and found that Apple's new emergency SOS feature can reliably activate in the event of a controlled vehicle collision.
TechRax released a video today that can see his team remotely controlling a driverless car with an iPhone 14 Pro strapped to the driver's seat headrest before they attempt to ram it into a stationary vehicle.
After a series of near misses and the addition of several dilapidated road vehicles to form a wall to make it easier to hit the target, the RC car successfully crashed at low speed in what can be described as a typical fender bender crash.
After a seemingly brief delay, the iPhone 14 Pro's car crash detection automatically activates, and the phone initiates an emergency SOS countdown, which is manually canceled by the team before emergency services can be called.
In a second successful attempt, the car slammed into the wall at a higher speed, its hood becoming an accordion in the impact. Likewise, Apple's crash detection feature was reliably activated, and then again manually deactivated by the team.
While TechRax's test results don't necessarily prove that the feature is equally reliable in real-world uncontrolled severe crashes, the fact that it does activate as expected should give iPhone 14 series users confidence to keep the feature enabled.
To activate car crash detection, the motion sensors of the iPhone 14 series have a high dynamic range gyroscope and high g accelerometer, GPS, barometer, microphone and advanced motion algorithms that must work together to accurately detect collisions.
By default, all Apple iPhone 14 series models, Apple Watch SE 2, Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra support car crash detection.
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