The first of three 911 calls came just after 2:15 a.m. Sunday.
And it was dialed automatically by an iPhone.
Dispatchers answered to a recording: The owner of this phone has been in a severe crash, it said; they were not responding.
That call — alerting officers to the car-tree collision that killed six people near 56th and Randolph streets — is believed to be the first time an automated cellphone message has contacted the 911 center, said Lincoln Police Capt. Todd Kocian.
And it could be among the first times Apple’s Crash Detection technology was put in play. The company had introduced the feature just weeks earlier, in its line of new iPhone 14s and Apple Watch models, though a spokesperson said Apple wouldn’t be able to share how many times the feature has since been used.
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The motion-sensing technology relies on a series of components: an accelerometer to measure G-forces, a gyroscope, a barometer to detect cabin pressure changes from an airbag deployment, GPS and the microphone, which can recognize the sound of a crash.
All of that is paired with an algorithm — developed with a million hours of real-world driving and crash record data, Apple said — to sense side and front impacts, rear-end collisions and rollovers.
When the technology detects an apparent severe crash, the phone sounds an alert — in case its owner can’t see the screen — and the watch taps its owner’s wrist.
Both display an emergency slider, giving the owner 10 seconds to call 911, or an option to dismiss. If the owner does neither, the devices start a 10-second countdown. After that, they call 911 automatically, indicating their owner has been in a crash and providing GPS coordinates.
If the owner had added emergency contacts to their device, it automatically sends the message and location to them, too.
The technology is new to Apple, but it’s been available for several years. Google’s Pixel phone introduced it in 2018, and several third-party companies — like OnStar and Life360 — also offer crash-detection services.