iPhone crash detection technology helps save man's life after driving off cliff

Crash detection technology available on newer model iPhones likely helped save a man's life Friday night when he drove off a cliff in the Angeles National Forest. 

Search leaders said they may have never found him alive if not for the new crash detection technology on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, and newer model Apple Watches that still works when the user doesn't have cell service.

“Myself and another team member went over the side,” Mike Leum with LA County Search and Rescue said. “After spotting bent guard rail and bark missing off trees, he descended hundreds of feet on a rope, hoping to find the injured driver. And then 400 feet we hit the bottom, and then found his car in the stream and him ejected next to the car.

“He had a major gash in his head and he had active bleeding so we had to stop the bleeding, bandage him up. He was able to be hoisted into the helicopter.”

Here’s how the iPhone technology works. If you are in a severe crash, crash detection will activate and it immediately puts you in contact with the nearest 911 call center. 

“There’s nothing to download,” said Steve Goldsworthy, technology director for LASD Search and Rescue. “If you have an iPhone 14 or I believe it is an iPhone 14 Pro, it’s already there, it’s already built in.

But if you don’t have cell service, like the injured driver, the phone will still call for help via satellite. The satellite is able to locate the iPhone, telling rescue crews where to search. 

In late June, it helped find a woman who broke her leg while hiking in Tujunga and on Friday, it may have saved this man too.

“Without the SOS service from iPhone, I don’t know when or if we would have ever found him,” Leum said.

Leum has been in search and rescue for three decades. When he started he said he was happy to have a pager in earlier days. But in 2023, he’s grateful for his new high tech teammate. 

“Getting to him in a timely manner is what saved him,” Leum said.