I bet this is a great feature (and I do have an Apple Watch), but can we please hold for a sec here? This piece reads like an Ad. Furthermore, many comments here are about "I want to see my kids grow up". Now please, calculate the odds of:
- you are in a terrible accident
- there is no one around you to call an ambulance
- you can’t call an ambulance yourself, because you are knocked out or can’t move
I think the odds for such an event are rather low. If you like smart watches, sure, go ahead and buy one. But for everybody who just wants to wear it because they are afraid: I don’t think it’s necessary for most people, unless you ride around alone in remote areas and are inexperienced or whatever.
My point is: don’t buy because of fear if your risk profile is super incredibly low.
- you can’t call an ambulance yourself, because you are knocked out or can’t move
Increasingly large odds after a certain age, and not small if you do certain sports (e.g. trekking, climbing, etc) regardless of age.
In fact, older people falling accidents is so common, a proverb in a European country says: "The elderly die either from falling or while shitting" -- the original is funnier than the translation, because the two causes rhyme).
The accident doesn't have to be terrible either. Tons of run of the mill accidents leave people unconscious...
But you don't read about such cases as such.
E.g. an elder person who fell either they eventually get up in time and call for help (so you don't read any story), or they don't, and the story is "person found dead in their apartment" etc, and might or might not mention the fall...
Is it as necessary as a spare tire in your car or a fire extinguisher in your home? No. But (since the device it does other stuff too) not bad to have regardless.
Note: For certain categories, this is so needed, that there are expensive special purpose devices that are popular for certain cases (e.g. elderly with dementia, parkison, bad backs, and so on), e.g.: https://www.medicalalertadvice.com/fall-detection/
But this is a multi-purpose device, and a cool one at that, plus it has a phone attached and can call the 911 itself, and gives this ability as just another feature to everyone!
> Tons of run of the mill accidents leave people unconscious...
Indeed. My friend's grandma slipped while getting in the bathtub. They found her barely alive 3 days later when she missed her hair appointment and the stylist called her son. Previously, she was the life of the party and went to the gym almost every day. She didn't last a few days after that fall broke her hip. The outcome may have been different if she got help right away and if nothing else, she wouldn't have suffered for a few days. She was in such good physical health that nobody expected something like this to happen.
>..the problem here seems more that nobody missed her for three days. So loneliness is the key issue here and an Apple watch will not fix that.
That's a problem, but I don't think that's the main takeaway from this story.
You could have a loving family and friends and still not be "missed for 3 days". 3 days are not big enough span of time for adults, in the grand scheme of things. E.g. if your wife is on vacation, or you/she work in another city, or have some deal going on, and you talk 1-2 times a week, it's easy for 2-3 days to slip by without anybody noticing you. Friends too might come by once a week or 1-2 times a month, and easily miss you for 3 days (that would already be more often than many people with close friends see them).
Heck, and even 1 day or even 2-3 hours would be enough for serious damage, if you weren't discovered after a fall/accident.
Dear god, man. The woman was "the life of the party" and went to the gym every day, and she DIED a few days after this fall. And your argument is the problem is that she was lonely and a consumer tech device won't fill the hole in her life?
There are many people who are very dear to me, that I talk to once or twice a week. My parents for example. I live alone, hundreds of miles away.
If I died today, the only place that could figure it in a day or so out would be my workplace. If I didn't work, then it could be a week before my parents or friends began to suspect something.
>Likely your Apple Watch won't be able to call for help if you're injured trekking or climbing, unless there's a cell tower on the mountain.
Don't know about the US, but in several mountains I've been on around the world (not in developing countries though), signal was just fine. It might not work for Everest, or the remotest part of the Rockies, but most hikings/treks are not in such places...
This is true. I am going trekking in a remote area and bought a Garmin InReach Mini. I know it pairs with my phone so it would be cool if there was some Apple Watch Siri shortcut that could make a satellite SOS message via the Garmin when a fall is detected.
Yup, for us hikers it would need to be able to use satellite communications to be of much value. Something of that nature would seriously tempt me to upgrade from PLB to inReach.
Yes! Falls by the elderly are a huge issue and there have been major product lines that focus on it. Many will probably remember the 80s/90s commercials about "I've fallen and I can't get up!"
>not small if you do certain sports (e.g. trekking, climbing, etc)
If you're serious about hiking/climbing you should never be in a position where you would need an apple watch to save you. You should always let people know where you are going, what you are planning to do, and when you plan to be back or at least back in contact otherwise they should call a rescue team. If you're solo climbing and your apple watch is what you're relying on in case of emergency you probably have far bigger issues to worry about
That being said, it does seem like it could be useful for the elderly in some scenarios
Telling my wife I'm going up the South Loop will let her point S&R in the general area. Where on the 8 1/2 miles of trail (or a bit off it if I stopped to take a leak) am I? (However, that's probably better than what the watch could do as service along there varies from marginal to nonexistent.)
On the other hand, I don't see that there is any appreciable fall risk from hiking. It's the scramblers that get hurt, not those of us who stick to trails.
That's a fair point, assuming you have service it could make it easier to find your specific location in case something happens. However, I'd be much more likely to recommend a GPS beacon specifically designed for this purpose rather than an apple watch. My dad and I used to wear beacons while skiing in the outback in case of an avalanche
I'd also consider trail running. I sometimes run after work. I don't carry alot, and on the trails at sunset I hardly see anyone. I could see myself taking a tumble and needing help. I once encountered a wolf out there and sprinted like never before to get out of the area. I could have easily fell.
Yep. I broke my ankle because I had to get back home quickly and I tripped while descending some boulders. Fortunately I was in mobile coverage and on a trail that a lot of surfers use, so I was able to call an ambulance and had a few surfers stop and help me out.
Yeah, trail runners certainly could take a tumble, also. I see plenty of them and I'm amazed at their ability to avoid injury on all the rocks on the trail.
I carry a PLB--but those can't sense a fall, they only broadcast if you specifically trigger them.
Anyway, you're thinking of an avalanche beacon. Those are to help others you are with find you quickly if you're buried in the snow, they have no GPS capability.
But don't forget about the "golden hour" and the difference between being, say, lost or slightly injured and being seriously injured and in shock or unconscious.
I had a friend biking on a remote highway in the early morning where there is very little traffic. He was clipped by a morning worker at the factory who dozed off puncturing his lung and throwing him in the ditch. If that worker hadn’t stopped to help, he would have died there. An Apple Watch would would have at least let 911 know where he was and that he was unresponsive. He has two kids and is a great professor, and his life hung on a split second decision of someone who was likely terrified of the consequences of what just happened, but luckily made the right choice (he got a ticket which my friend paid in thanks for stopping).
Edit just realized I know of several other instances where an Apple Watch would have saved someone or kept them for have a days torture with broken legs in their back yard while living alone. Surely this is morning common than you make out?
The odds become uncomfortably high for the elderly. In the U.S., falls are the leading cause of both injuries (at 7 million/yr) and death from injuries (at 27 thousand/yr) for the elderly[1]. It is a significant risk even if you aren't older. Worldwide, falls are the leading cause of accidental or unintentional injury deaths overall[2]. Given the incidence rate, I would say the odds of a serious fall injury while alone are significant enough to warrant precautions such as a smart watch with fall detection.
The odds become uncomfortably high for the elderly. In the U.S., falls are the leading cause of both injuries (at 7 million/yr) and death from injuries (at 27 thousand/yr) for the elderly[1]
There should be a law forcing them to wear bicycle helmets for their own good.
> I think the odds for such an event are rather low.
And I guess you are writing just to the young users. There are a lot of old people living alone (in the part of the world where such watches are affordable). Falling, even in their own house, then remaining immobile and unable to call for help is a common cause of huge problems (1) (2).
The specialized devices already exist too, but a lot of people don't carry them, until they already suffer such event and also have luck to survive. Such people (who would otherwise not survive) get potentially (if the system do engage and what follows can be influenced) a huge benefit in a watch that has such functionality.
"With the monthly costs nearly twice that of a traditional medical alert monitoring system, the cost alone may be the deciding factor. Is the extra costs worth it? Only you can make that decision. Keep in mind, these emergency alert systems cannot detect 100% of all falls."
2) Also see the exponential increase of chances to die with age:
> Falling, even in their own house, then remaining immobile and unable to call for help is a common cause of huge problems
That's been a solved problem for years though. As your link points out, LifeAlert bracelets (and similar technologies) have had fall detection for quite some time now. The new thing that Apple (and Garmin) have brought to the table is pairing that will a cell radio.
Given the other benefits of a LifeAlert bracelet (or pendant), I'm not sure the Apple Watch is a major improvement (especially for someone with failing eyesight).
Besides the fact that you cannot estimate the value of a person's life and the fact I don't want to think you're trolling, it can happen to anyone.
We have recently a case of a coworker (middle-age man) falling in his house while wife and kids were away and stayed there for hours until somehow reached his phone with a broken back.
Which is what I said. The watch provides more value the when younger. Middle aged to like 65 is probably the sweet spot of value. Though I guess it depends on how much you value every second of life.
Not sure why you're downvoted, because you are right. There are times when this can fail. Even the damn "stand up once an hour" seems to fail sometimes. Or Siri. Or the watch breaks in the crash.
West Michigan (US) here, Verizon has coverage everywhere, I could totally see somebody picking blueberries in a field, tripping and hitting their head.
At least around here cell reception != humans within earshot at all.
I don't think everyone's getting one just because they are afraid. However, even very low probability events with very severe consequences may warrant having some kind of automatic emergency beacon... although in retrospect I guess this is exactly what you are saying. Eh, maybe this will be useful to someone anyway.
Think of it in terms of a risk assessment[1]. If you are engaging in an activity, you should look at the probability of injury and then the consequences if that occurs.
For example, I'm going mountain biking by myself. The area I'm riding in has a loose surface, but no extreme hills or other features. So it's somewhat likely I'll fall, but the consequence of that won't be extreme. Conversely, I'm riding in a hilly area with a rough but grippy surface. Relatively, the probability of a fall may be lower, but the consequence could be much higher.
Using this type of not-exactly-quantitative reasoning, depending on what you are doing (and the consequences of something going wrong), it may be very reasonable to buy a smart watch or something similar just for this purpose.
Happens more than you'd think. My grandmother (perfectly healthy and living on her own at 92) slipped and fell in the bathroom. She broke her hip and could not get to the phone. No one knew for 18 hours, after which the initial relatively simple and repairable injuries has caused enough follow-on issues that, even with surgery, she never recovered, spent time in an intensive rehabilitation facility, and died.
It's not only about the odds, but the expected return. That's the whole point of insurance, for instance. Having an accident under these circumstances is quite improbable, but in case it happened, the return would be massive. Actually, since it might be a matter of life or death, perhaps it doesn't even make sense to think about the expected utility, because it would be infinite.
In December of 2009 my dad died. He was getting the mail, slipped on some ice, and hit his head. He laid there for about 30 minutes before a neighbor found him. He was put on life support but the damage was done.
I’m still mad, 10 years later, about the fact that he has 2 amazing grandkids who won’t get to know him, or that I can’t ask him about the state of the world.
I don’t know if the Apple Watch would have helped him, but I do know that you haven’t done a full risk assessment. He wasn’t in an isolated area, he wasn’t inexperienced. Falls get scarier and scarier the older your loved ones get.
I don't understand your post at all. I think there's a very large population of individuals >60 years of age who are frequently in circumstances where no one is around them to call and ambulance, and they cannot call one themselves due to being infirm, disabled, ill, etc.
I had a friend killed in a hit and run, she was found nearly a week later by family members searching possible ways she could have used to walk home from work, had she had something like this (and it had not been destroyed) they could have had closure much faster.
My mother's father, while still alive, rapidly deteriorated mentally and was in two accidents by himself in somewhat remote areas and also went to drive to the VA 15 minutes away and ended up several hours away lost and confused when state police came upon him.
My half-brother was driving a box truck for work when it went off road (ice) and into a very steep ditch, the truck was not visible from the road and was unconscious for some amount of time, fortunately this was still in flip phone days so his phone was in his pants pocket and within reach. Even on the phone with 911 he said he saw the emergency vehicles pass him (via their lights) while he was on the phone with 911.
2 or 3 years ago, the brother of the girl that was killed in the hit and run, hit a patch of ice on an on or off ramp and rolled his car multiple times down the hill with his pregnant girlfriend in the car, with the car landing on it's roof. Fortunately it happened during day and there were people there that witnessed it and while quite confused/disoriented they both remained conscious, had that happened at night such a device could have summoned help.
I'm one person and these are just the instances I know of where such a technology could have been useful.
A lot of people on HN live in big cities, ride bicycles or public transportation to work, are rarely if ever out of sight of multiple human beings. That's not always the case. Technology like this is great, and the more awareness it gets the more it will be adopted, the more it is adopted the more lives it can potentially save and the more data it can provide on how to refined.
What if someone is home alone and falls down the stairs? Has a heart attack? Is cleaning gutters and falls? My father's father was cleaning his windows, fell and hit his head on the driveway but his wife heard the ladder fall with him and was able to call 911, but what if that was a widower at 2pm on a weekday and he just had to lay there until someone happened to drive by, what if he was in the back yard and had a privacy fence?
The late Grant Thompson crashed his aircraft this summer (I believe they said died on impact) and was able to be located by comparable technology and by knowing where he'd be flying. Had he not died on impact, something like this could have saved his life or had he not told everyone where he was going and when he expected to return this could have given a location to go search (assuming he had signal) and led to a quick recovery of his body.
Edit: and actually, this may have saved my own life if I'd had the technology and it had triggered from a fall from bed. Some years ago I had a hypokalemic event where I was effectively paralyzed, with great effort I managed to get to the edge of the bed and proceeded to fall out of bed like a sack of bricks onto the floor, barely able to move my hands with minimal manual dexterity and poor coordination, fortunately my mother was already living with me due to her health but I still laid there on the floor, with only a bathroom between our rooms, yelling for help for probably 5 minutes. That was a pretty interesting experience, I've written about it here -> https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2013/2/19/flashback...
Now I wonder if you can go "hey Google, call 911" to a Google home.
Agreed, but people buy safety/prep things (like guns) for phenomenally less likely scenarios.
I used to have an Apple Watch, and now have a Garmin that has similar features. Nice to know they're there, but I wouldn't buy the device just for it.
That said, if I had been the son in the story, yeah, i probably would have run out and bought my own the very next day! The power of a personal connection to a story.
Happened to me spring skiing last year. Not a lot of people on the mountain; I was separated from my group; I fell and broke some ribs and could not move; I was lying on/in the snow but not dressed for those conditions. My watch called 911 and messaged my kid.
Still not sure what your point is or why you feel the need to tell people that may considering it not to buy it. I would guess a lot more people are in the risk zone than your post may suggest (especially elderly) and maybe it happens that someone decides not to buy it now that actually should because of your comment.
So negative. I ride and run in the woods near me quite a bit. It's peaceful and quiet, but the opposite side of that coin is that no one would find me for quite some time if something went sideways.
In my rural state the fastest connection I’ve ever had on my phone was in about as remote as you can get fishing a creek surrounded by 30’ embankments. Bet I was the only person connected to that tower.
I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time such news surfaces shortly after Apple releases new line of devices.
Even if this situation coincidentally has happened recently, the subtle message is still here: "you can rely on Apple Watch and you should buy one - better safe than sorry"
Indeed! These native ads are getting more blatant by the day. I know times are hard for print media but this doesnt help with the perceived credibility or lack thereof.
This likely isn't a native ad (since it being one would break the law - the website posted (nor the original source[1]) state they are paid for the article - which is a legal requisite in the states.
>This likely isn't a native ad (since it being one would break the law
That hardly ever stopped news outlets from doing so. In fact, in some places everybody (every outlet) does it, even though it's against the law. Of course depends on the country and how exhaustive enforcement is (and if they can just get out of it with a slap on the wrist/small fine, in the eventually they're discovered).
That said, I don't think this is the case here. A device saving someone's life simply makes for a good story (technology, human interest, feel good result, and Apple to boot, clicks all the "people will be interested" boxes), and there are stories written for a lot less ("see this curious grumpy cat" or whatever passes for new). And such a story, if written, couldn't have but a positive spin (a person's life was saved after all).
From the moment the story actually happened, it was inevitable that outlets would report it, and with a positive message for said technology.
> Indeed! These native ads are getting more blatant by the day. I know times are hard for print media but this doesnt help with the perceived credibility or lack thereof.
I don't understand the complaints about this being an ad at all. Okay, so maybe it's an ad. Is it conveying useful information? I didn't know Apple Watch's were capable of doing this. Ads are just another way of conveying information - often that information is useless. But in this case? No, it's not useless information. It's important and valuable to many people. The alternative is that there's no ads and nobody finds out about this feature, and they lose out on the opportunity to decide whether this feature (and others) warrant a purchase. It also sparks conversation about possible alternatives (and no, the devices for seniors aren't an alternative for many people), or where alternatives fall short.
My cousin died last week of a heart attack on the way from his house in a village south of Nuremberg to the bakery 10 minutes away to get bread for breakfast. His Apple Watch (presumably because of the fall detection) called emergency services for him and gave him time to call his wife.
My condolences, it's always painful losing family. I too lost a cousin about six years ago due to heart failure, he had just about turned 21. I wish he'd had an Apple Watch (or similar device) at the time.
A dear colleague died of a heart attack a couple months ago. His Apple Watch didn't save him. He collapsed at work.
The Apple Watch is very explicit about not being a panacea, and currently only advertises detection of a specific kind of arythmia or elevated heart rate. Note that the original comment mentioned that fall detection was probably the trigger.
I'm still pretty angry at the universe about my colleague's sudden death. I just want to temper expectations about what the Watch can or cannot do.
Heart attacks are sudden and sometimes nothing could save you. My mother is a medical professional, and she told me the story about a doctor in her hospital: one morning he realized he was about to have a heart attack, called emergency services himself and left the door open; he was dead by the time the ambulance arrived, five to ten minutes later.
There was a legendary cardiologist at my medical school who predicted his own demise, took a Holter monitor home with him one night, wired himself up, went to sleep, never woke up, and left his colleagues with the 12-lead trace of his death.
It is a reference to the number of electrodes attached to the monitor. A 12 lead setup can provide a much more detailed signal and thus be used in different diagnostics than a lower lead obtained trace.
A 12-lead ECG report/graph/whatever it's called. 12 wires collecting data (versus eg the Apple Watch implementation which is equivalent to a 1-lead ECG)
I wouldn't be to sure the Apple watch is even comparable to 1-lead ECG, simply due to the difference of how ECG is attached to you and how the Apple watch is.
Through this doesn't mean the Apple watch can't be a useful addition, just don't rely on it.
12 lead ECG is just a technology. There could be other techniques. However, the Apple Watch might be comparable to higher number of leads but never be identical to the number of leads.
Except, when you wear additional bracelets at your both legs, the other hand, both shoulders and another 6 on your chest. Then yes ;). And consider the continuous cyborgization of our society, that is not that far away.
The 12 lead ECG is about detecting the electrical impulses
of heart beats from different angles of your bodies.
If you found a technology to detect these mV values from a meter away ... tell me ;) We will be rich ;)
There's a reason ECG probes are attached to multiple points on the body, and you can infer quite a bit of info from just comparing multiple signals alone, including if you have your heart flipped, for some reason. :D You'll not get that from your watch.
Some heart attacks kill faster than others. They are not all sudden. My friend, a doctor, had a heart attack and decided to go to the second nearest hospital because it had a better reputation than the nearest. He's still alive today.
It doesn't just detect arrhythmia -- it also detects if you have fallen and are not moving (and will automatically call emergency services after some duration, if configured as such). More details at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944 if you're interested to know more.
I can't speak for all cases but there are often unknown medical conditions involved. My aunt got the flu one year and it weakened her heart so much that she required a transplant and while she lived for a while after that, she died at 27.
Please vaccinate yourselves and loved ones even for the flu.
A friend of mine runs a charity [1] that deals with providing AED (Automated External Defibrillator) devices to organisations. These things save lives. They can deliver shocks to the heart if necessary and can guide laypeople through giving CPR until help arrives (I think many models now actually tell you if you aren't giving strong enough compressions, for example).
I would also highly recommend people go through this app [2] to get some familiarity with CPR. Then take a proper CPR course (I need to take my own advice on doing a proper course, actually).
i see those AEDs popping up around, ie in the office, train station, every pharmacy around has them. My wife is an emergency doctor, an she has clear opinion about those - yes they save lives, but in most cases, people will end up as 'vegetables' (not sure what's the proper english term for +-brain death). I only presume she meant more severe heart attacks that would normally result in death prior to emergency arriving or shortly after.
So don't expect miracles where none are currently possible. Do all you can obviously in case of need, and ideally make yourself familiar with procedures a bit, any delay will worsen the chances.
Just like with old school CPR, there's really no guarantee you won't be a vegetable. Maybe you get lucky and the person doing CPR does it right, the AED arrives soon enough, and the paramedics arrive soon enough. Always make sure you have a living will to cover such kinds of situations. I would hate having my vegetable body ending up in a fight between loved ones who want to keep me alive and loved ones who want to do the humane thing.
Here in Denmark there's a volunteer "heart runner" programme. If someone calls 911 and has a cardiac arrest, people in the programme that nearby can be notified to fetch an available public AED and run to the patient (or attempt manual resuscitation).
According to their material, the 30-day survival rate in Denmark has gone from 3.8% (2001) to 10.4% in 2016, with 67.5% bystander assistance: https://hjertestarter.dk/english/you-can-save-lives though it's not clear how much the programme itself can claim.
According to various papers, rapid CPR/AED after a heart attack can triple survival rates.
It's still pretty bleak outcome, but better than e.g. in 2002 Detroit, where 1 out of 471 out of hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) survived to hospital discharge. In USA, all those stats are apparently being tracked by a programmed called CARES.
Nah, vast majority aren't locked up here, from experience. Pubs in the UK tend to have them, as do larger shops, community halls, libraries, I've seen old red phone booths repurposed as AED storage, in Birmingham city centre I saw a really modern one like one of those light-up ad screen / phone booth / touchscreen signs, which could simultaneously call emergency services, deliver CPR advice on the screen and dispatch the AED stored underneath - was awesome. Honestly I'm surprised (and pleased) that they don't get stolen/vandalised more considering the amount that are just out there - though I don't know what you'd do with a black market AED lol.
I have yet to see one that's properly locked up [that didn't have easy to break emergency glass, anyway]. My workplace has a few in special AED boxes, but those have the emergency glass and the hammer.
Must be a southern thing. I've never seen an outdoor (or phoebox) one that doesn't have a keycode lock on it. You're supposed to call 999 before using one anyway, so it's not a major impediment.
There has been quite a bit of study of intercessory prayer. i.e. for people that don't know they are being prayed for.
No affects have been found.
> In 1872, the Victorian scientist Francis Galton made the first statistical analysis of third-party prayer. He hypothesized, partly as satire, that if prayer were effective, members of the British Royal Family would live longer than average, given that thousands prayed for their well-being every Sunday, and he prayed over randomized plots of land to see whether the plants would grow any faster, and found no correlation in either case.
The wiki page contradicts your statement about "no effects".
there's been a number of studies showing lots of effects. Most studies seem to show slight positive effects from prayer, some show none and some show negative effects.
You don’t get to take the “no effect” over the “small effect” just because you’re an atheist. That is precisely what taking faith over data looks like!
My answers would be that we're arguing over statistical noise.
I take what I consider to be the simplest explanation in the absence of a credible alternative, that prayer does nothing when the recipient is unaware of it.
I take that view because I've never heard an alternative explaination that didn't appear to break the second law of thermodynamics.
A magical, invisible, omnipresent, omnipotent "all known laws of nature defying"-being that answers prayers, requires significantly more evidence than a small effect in some meta study.
Absolutely. My point is that "I'm an atheist so I'll take the option that agrees with my personal beliefs" isn't a valid line of reasoning. You could symmetrically argue "I'm a catholic so I'll take the option that suggests there is an effect, albeit a small one". Now we're just arguing whose personal beliefs are right.
A more properly scientific line of reasoning would be to instead say that you'll assume the small-to-nonexistent effect is nonexistent until somebody produces a model capable of predicting the proposed small effect, or a myriad other arguments along the same general lines.
"the overall estimated effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccine for preventing medically attended, laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection was 47%"
I can’t find the source now but I remember hearing about a study into the efficacy of prayer. Briefly, the study recruited several Christians to pray for patients in a hospital. The patients were split into three groups: a control group who weren’t prayed for, a group who were prayed for but who weren’t told, and a group who were prayed for and were informed that they were being prayed for. Allegedly the patients in the last group had the most issues with concern and depression, allegedly because they assumed that because they were being prayed for, they were in fact really seriously ill.
Years ago, I joined a health list for parents of children with a very serious medical condition. When I joined, the discussion involved a lot of "Our child is facing X surgery. Please pray for us."
The longer I was there, the more the discussion became "Our child is facing X surgery. Have you or your child had this surgery? Pros? Cons? Any good tips?"
Prayer very often means "It's hopeless. Humans can't fix this. Our only hope is divine intervention." And it's hugely depressing and disempowering.
Prayer is a human act of connection that has been going on longer than recorded history. Evolutionarily, if most people felt it was hopelessness, it wouldn’t have lasted so long.
Modern feelings of hopelessness and nihilism extremely common in the western world, many people are dealing with these feelings through medication. The effectiveness of regular prayer on mental health is surprising according to studies and demographic data.
I actually believe in the power of prayer and considered commenting on that specifically to try to avoid someone replying in this fashion. I didn't because this is HN and saying something like that can be a convenient excuse for a bunch of people to accuse you of being "woo," irrational, etc.
Let me rephrase that: When the people around you offer nothing but prayers, it's often because they don't believe there is any practical support they are capable of offering. In a group setting, if everyone offers you prayers and zero practical support, the signal it sends is pretty depressing.
To be clear, this was a support group for a deadly genetic disorder that frequently kills children before they reach adulthood. It is classified as a dread disease for a reason. The psychological effect of the diagnosis is huge.
It's practically a sign on the wall a la "All those who enter herein are damned." kind of thing.
Sorry to read your cousin died this way. I don't understand.
The Apple Watch told him his heart isn't working right - automatically calling emergency services - and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart?
Or was it that he too passed out, the Apple Watch called emergency services, who resuscitated him enabling him to call his wife?
> and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart
The watch will call emergency services, then it will text your emergency contact(s) and let them know you've experienced a hard fall. I don't know exactly how, in this instance, that was then converted to a voice call.
Edit: I see in another comment that he initiated a call himself because he was conscious enough to do so.
The specs for the watch specifically rule out heart attack detection, by the way.
> Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks. If you ever experience chest pain, pressure, tightness, or what you think is a heart attack, call emergency services immediately.
"What we list for legal purposes" and "what the device actually does" might not be the same thing. I imagine saying "my device detects heart attacks" gets the FDA involved and makes everything ten times more expensive...
The watch doesn't have enough data to detect a heart attack. It's not possible for the device to do it (with current, or even near-future technology it's not possible for any wrist worn device to detect a heart attack as it's happening).
Yeah, technically they're all levels of EMT, but "EMT" generally refers to "EMT-Basic" (a few months of training, a couple nights a week). EMT-Paramedic is ~18 months of a couple nights a week, plus 1,000+ hours of clinical time.
Well the watch isn't measuring troponin levels so it's hard to imagine how useful it could ever be at MI detection, especially given the limitations of a poor contact single lead ECG.
ER nurse here - some STEMIs I've taken care of had negative initial trop's (not all though). The 4 hr delta should of course be positive though - I don't typically check the 4 hr repeat for STEMIs though because they're long gone out of the ED to the cath lab then to CVICU.
I could imagine the thing detecting Vfib but it would need to use some good AI signal processing to exclude artifacts. Elevated ST segments, probably not, even with good AI.
OTOH doesn't the EKG feature only work when you touch the watch with your other hand? In which case it would be useless for heart attacks that caused you to lose consciousness.
The watch did an emergency sos. AFAIK no heart related notification triggers that - only fall detection can.
Outside possibility is he felt bad, saw a heart rhythm notification, and manually triggered emergency sos by holding the power button. But a fall alert seems much more likely.
The specific language you are looking for here is "indications for use". The way the FDA works, you cannot advertise (even directly) a medical device for a usage you have not indicated in your filing and backed up with the required evidence. The level and type of evidence will depend on the type of filing and claims. A medical professional can advise for a different use (called "off label") but you, as the device developer, cannot even hint at it.
Aside: as others note, though, you can't really detect heart attacks well from something this simple.
Differentiating between cardiac arrest and taking the watch off your wrist may be interesting. And I kinda wonder how good any single-lead EKG would be at detecting a heart attack when your heart is still beating. Even the expensive multi-lead machines usually auto-diagnose me with an old infarction, which is false.
Sometimes the rhythm may degrade into a ventricular rhythm, like v-tach then into v-fib if not treated. A heart can still pump in v-tach, albeit very inefficiently, but in v-fib, no blood is pumped. On the other hand, taking the watch off results in no signal input which is different than what you would see on the monitor for asystole.
Apart from the immediate “flatline” the watch also detects that it is not proximate to the skin. As soon as you take it off the watch disables things like ApplePay. It knows when it being/has been taken off.
I'd guess taking the watch off would produce a classic flat line. A heart in arrest which is in the process of dying will produce irregular electrical output.
It absolutely can. It's more sensitive than equipment hospitals use. There's an ongoing data collection program to calibrate it for that purpose. But since it hasn't been approved by regulators for use as such, they'd be in legal trouble if they claimed otherwise.
Condolences from my side too. My dad suddenly died in 2011 from a heart attack. It runs in the family so I have to be vigilant. I do love hearing about these Apple Watch stories though.
Apple don't get nearly enough credit for the thought and effort they put into these sorts of features. The same goes to their dedication to accessibility, which is industry-leading and honestly pretty inspiring.
Apple has had strong accessibility features since before they were a household name, when they were a fraction of the size of the company they are today.
Ironically, I think the accessibility focus started because they were a fraction of today’s size: in the early 2000s, section 508 requirements were becoming more stringent; there was an increasing risk that Apple would get shut out of government contracts, and due to the small market share of OS X, it was not considered a viable market for commercial screen reader vendors, so Apple decided to roll their own.
Thanks to strong leadership in the accessibility team, there was an increasing buy-in from the top, and throughout the company. Today, accessibility is indeed in Apple’s DNA, but initially, there was quite a bit of genetic engineering and (dare I say it?) government regulation involved.
Apple was known for easy to use in the 1980s. While that isn't entirely accessibility, the two are related. The early macs had some accessibility features.
Evidence is simply being brought forth to showcase that before Apple became as large as they did, they still cared about accessiblity, irregardless of their "company size" as you stated.
I don't see how that's relevant at all in 2019. People WERE giving Apple mad props for their thoughtfulness back in the day. Now, they have revenue over a third that of Saudi Arabia's GDP. I was responding the OPs point. That's evidence for an argument nobody made.
I ordered my grandmother a Series 5 for this feature alone, in fact it just arrived at my door today and she’s coming over later this week so I can get it setup and walk her through the basics.
She has a hard time getting up from the floor if she kneels or sits down as is, one good fall from a cat tripping her or something is likely to be devastating.
The only iPhone I've owned is asecond hand iPhone 5C that I used for a few months. The watch is making me think my next phone will be an iPhone. Fortunately, I don't think there are any Android only apps that I depend on so the switch should be easy.
Does anyone know if you need to get the watch with an active cellular plan to have the auto-911 feature? Or is it like how cell phones without a plan can still call 911?
Why would a different accelerometer surprise you? The entire SiP is different between the Series 3 and Series 4. One source say the accelerometer in S4 has higher dynamic range. [0]
For battery life concerns, I can see them implementing some of the fall detection logic in hardware as well. For example, a high shock or shaking could trigger the fall-detection software to wake. Although, with the 60-second period, they probably wake the main processor often enough anyway that hardware detection might not save much power.
Well, crap. I have been avoiding smart watches like the plague but this plus the ECG may put me over the edge. My family has a history of heart disease, I commute by bike every day, and I have a young child who I want to see grow up.
One of my friends was recently killed in a motorcycle crash. A passerby found them in the morning in some bushes near the side of the road. We don't know what time the crash occurred, or even if they died right away. This feature may have saved them.
If you're in the market for a smart watch, and you're a cyclist, I'd recommend checking out Garmin. They have a massive array of sensors and record very precise data that is aggregated on Garmin Connect. It's been invaluable to me for assessing training effectiveness over time. They make Apple watches look like toys. If you want the latest and greatest, the Forerunner 945 is probably what you're looking for, but the older models can be found for cheap and are still solid watches. If you want emergency alerts, you'll have to stick with newer models though.
I think you are missing the point here completely and utterly. Compared to what the Apple Watch can do (as mention on the post and several comments) the garmin watch may be the real toy here.
That's hardly true, the two devices have very different purposes. I couldn't run an ultramarathon (or even a shorter trail race) in an apple watch. That's before we even start talking about features. The battery would die long before I finish.
The FR945 that was released this year has far more features than the apple watch (including the emergency features). Even comparing the Apple Watch 4 to my FR935 (released in 2017), the Apple watch would be a huge step down for my purposes. That's all without mentioning the fact that I'd probably break the apple watch on my first outing.
The Apple watch might be a better smart watch for day-to-day use, but next to a Garmin it's pretty obvious which is the toy.
When I was a kid, my next door neighbor was an ultra-marathoner and the fittest person I'd ever met. He died suddenly one day of a heart attack while out on a run.
When this happens it's typically due to undiagnosed cardiomyopathy (which is very difficult to detect). It's true that when something like that happens to someone they would've lived longer had they not been an endurance athlete, but most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.
I get a yearly physical just to be safe, but honestly running is my favorite way to decompress and I'd need some kind of diagnosis before giving it up.
> most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.
I'd venture to say they live far longer.
From the introduction of Vina & al 2016:
In longitudinal studies, physically active men and women have an approximately 30% lower risk of death compared with inactive people (Schnohr et al. 2015). No upper threshold for physical activity has ever been recommended (Pate et al. 1995). In fact, in studies performed on top‐level athletes, participation in endurance competitive sports increases life expectancy (Hartley & Llewellyn, 1939; Prout, 1972). Moreover, Karvonen and co‐workers found that Finnish champion skiers lived 2.8–4.3 years longer than the general male population in Finland (Karvonen et al. 1974). We tested the effect of strenuous exercise, performed by well‐trained humans, on their longevity. We measured average and maximal lifespan in cyclists who had taken part in the Tour de France between the years 1932 and 1964 and compared them with those of the average population in those years. Only cyclists born in Belgium, France and Italy were included in our study. The results were striking: we found an 11% increase in average longevity in Tour de France participants when compared with the general population (Sanchis‐Gomar et al. 2011). These results have been confirmed recently with the observation of a significant 41% lower mortality rate among French elite cyclists from the Tour de France, compared with the general male population (Marijon et al. 2013). Evidence from human studies supports the notion that regular, vigorous aerobic exercise might be a useful tool, with a dose–response effect, to improve the overall health status and longevity of the general population (Ruiz et al. 2010; Teramoto & Bungum, 2010). However, the controversy regarding the potential adverse effects of regular strenuous physical exercise continues (Benito et al. 2011; Schnohr et al. 2013). Schnohr and co‐workers have found that moderate‐intensity joggers have lower mortality rates that sedentary people or high intensity joggers. In other words the relationship between intensity of jogging and mortality follows a U‐shaped curve (Schnohr et al. 2015). Thus, the ideal ‘dose’ of exercise needed to improve longevity is not a simple linear relationship. Genetic aspects as well as lifestyle factors (smoking, diet and alcohol consumption) may be important in interpreting studies aimed at determining the effect of exercise training on longevity.
I am wearing a Garmin FR945 right now; in fact, I sold my Apple Watch 4 a month back, after it sat on my nightstand for months following my purchase of the 945. I previously had an Apple Watch 2.
The AW might be a huge step down for your purposes, but I was fine recording 5+ hour bike rides and my 4+ hour (yeah, yeah) first marathon. I really disliked using a touch screen on the AW for recording runs, particularly intervals. I love the feature set of the 945 and haven't looked back.
THAT SAID, I would trust the Apple Watch over the Garmin any day of the week for 'lifesaving' type tech. Garmin's software is spotty, to say the least. First off, I can trigger the Garmin crash detection at will by jolting to a sudden stop on my bike and hopping off. Not all that aggressively -- it happens in my normal dismount process with some regularity. I have to tell it to cancel the emergency call.
Right now it's setup to text my wife. Looking at the config, it says "Select up to 3 people to be notified via text message and email if an incident occurs or assistance is needed". I don't know how I could set it up to call 911 if I wanted to.
And that would all assume it even works. Multiple times a week, my watch says it doesn't have connection with my iPhone X, and I have to reboot the watch for it to find my phone again. My wife's FR235+iPhone 7 setup seems more reliable, but at least once a month for the past 3-4 years, it's decided to stop syncing and we need to reboot the watch again.
IME, the Apple Watch <-> iPhone BT connection just works. All the time.
I had the Apple Watch track me during my hour long bike tours, GPS and heart rate sensor on and all, without any problems and with battery left to spare at the end of the day.
Seven to eight hours is probably the critical mark, but anything below that is no problem at all.
Ultramarathons (full 100 miles) usually takes between 24-30 hours according to one source (WaPo). I'm guessing you're thinking of regular 26.2 mile marathons.
To be wildly pedantic, an ultramarathon is anything over 42.2km (26.2mi). It's perfectly possible to do an ultra with an Apple Watch if you're only going 50km (even I can manage 50km within the 8h battery life.)
Yeah, ok, no you can’t do that with an Apple Watch. Seems an alright trade-off for Apple to make. The amount of people running ultra-marathons is probably miniscule.
Recent Garmin watches and cycling computers also have "incident detection" and can automatically send an alert to your emergency contact(s) after a fall. (I don't think any current Garmin models will directly dial 911, though.)
I have a Garmin Fenix 5X and it does not make the Apple Watch look like a toy. The Apple Watch integration is seamless, the Garmin Connect integration is a joke.
Moreover the Fenix has a clunky user interface, and is bulky and ugly.
The Apple Watch absolutely trounces the Garmin in every aspect, functional and aesthetic, except for two:
1) Water resistance: it's hard to argue with the Garmin's 100M water resistance.
2) Battery life, but it only does better here by being massive (ref. previous comment about bulkiness).
Seriously, unless you're spending a lot of time in the water, and if you're able to put the watch on charge every night, buy the Apple.
Quite true. I bought it for the GPS, mapping, and battery life, but this was really a mistake.
I have 8.5 inch wrists, and even though that's relatively chunky, the Garmin looks absolutely ridiculous.
The thing about fitness and sleep tracking is it's only useful if you're wearing the device pretty much all the time, particularly for things like daily calorie burn.
Whereas I found that there are so many contexts where it either wasn't appropriate, or I didn't want to, wear a gigantic activity watch. I slugged it out for a few months, but in the end gave up on it because it wasn't really practical or stylish.
The maps are something of a wash as well, because the screen is so tiny.
My other arguments stand, to the point where I wouldn't even recommend buying one of the smaller ones unless you really need the water resistance. I imagine even the smaller models still have better battery life than the Apple Watch, so that's another consideration.
This was a legitimate question. If it turns out it's pretty useless without an iphone (that is not clear to me, hence the question) then that's another consideration. Something from Garmin (or the other competitors) will work fully regardless of what mobile phone / computer you've already invested in.
While not yet there, Apple seems to be moving towards making the Apple Watch more stand-alone; their newest update, for instance, allows completely stand-alone apps to be downloaded from the App Store on-device.
No, but they are subjective anyway. But I do personally agree the Apple integration and UI is much nicer, they know what they are doing in that department. I would be interested to know how the multisport features compare on the apple watch. In my eyes the fenix series is for triathletes/endurance athletes and if you don't have excellent battery life it's a non-starter. And last I heard it doesn't have ANT+ support which is another blocker for me since none of my bike stuff has BLE.
How are they on privacy? The issue that I have is that every wearable device expects you to allow upload of sensitive information to their servers. At this point, especially with medical information such as heart rate, I do not trust it on any computer not covered by HIPAA or under my control.
How far do you go with that? Have you examined your CPU with an electron microscope? What about the motherboard? Every peripheral? Where does it end? At some point you have to trust someone.
Apple has a good history in respecting privacy. For example, if Facebook made a watch and claimed no data is sent from your watch to their servers, I would not believe in it. When Apple claims the same, I do believe it.
Or simply encrypt everything before it leaves the watch and decrypt client-side ala ProtonMail.
I believe most people, if given a discrete choice, would sacrifice 2% of battery life and "forgot your password?" features for the privacy of such information.
Anecdotally +1 on Garmin as well. My friend was in a relatively severe hit and run when he was on a bike. His bike computer called emergency services. It probably saved his life. (He’s doing okay now)
The bike computer pairs to the phone, phone (I believe) contacts emergency services. There was no smart watch involved, just saying their watches aren’t the only things they make with that capability.
+1 on Garmin watches. The "smartwatch" functionality leaves something to be desired, but the watch itself is great, with helpful training features, a great screen, and good battery life. I have the fr645 Music, and can bluetooth to wireless buds for a run.
The new Fenix 6 series is awesome, but they're a little bulky for my wrist.
The fenix series is a high end tool meant for serious backcountry use. The ratio of price to utility is actually really good when you compare it to other outdoor equipment. You could spend that much on ski bindings[0]. Not skis, literally just the bindings.
If you just want a smart watch for training then a Forerunner 235 would work fine.
Though even as someone who spends 40+ days/year in the backcountry skiing around the PNW, the 645m is plenty for me. That, combined with an inReach Mini incase shit hits the fan and I feel pretty well covered.
As a side note, those bindings are incredible. Easily one of the biggest innovation in skiing since shaped skis. I put 30 days on mine last season and didn't have a single issue; really impressive for a lightweight, finicky, and brand-new piece of gear.
Take a look at the amazfit pace. It's not as comprehensive as the garmins but does provide accurate data for cycling and running. You can also load gpx routes into it.
Check out the Forerunner 945, it's near feature parity with the Fenix 6, but it's in a plastic body. I've got a FR935 (which is basically a Fenix 5 in a plastic body) and it's seriously great for anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors.
I've been thinking of switching from an old Pebble to a Garmin because it has a daylight visible screen. Do they also have a system to text in case of emergency like the Apple watch?
I've been riding motorcycles on the street since 1986. For many parts of my life, a motorcycle was my only vehicle (including a couple of winters in Hamilton, ON).
During that time I never had any kind of crash or even a particularly close call. Two years ago I decided I didn't want to push my luck any further and sold my bike. Drivers are so distracted now that I feel my luck was going to run out soon.
I think getting a driving license should require everybody to qualify for motorcycle, bicycle, truck and regular car at once. That way they'd have the perspective of all these other users of the traffic infrastructure and it would help a lot to see through the eyes of others. As long as that's not the case there is no way I will ride a motorcycle in traffic.
if the watch could be paired with an iPad I would be more willing to buy into one. currently it still is just an accessory to an iPhone and for me that removes its desirability.
I would be more than happy to buy the cell enabled versions for my parents considering what the watches can do but neither is keen on using a smart phone let alone the associated costs of buying and maintaining one
Before the S4 Apple Watch came out, I used AliveCor. Works pretty well, though obviously not as reliably as the watch does. And to enable basic storage functionality in the app they want you to pay $5/month. Pretty quickly it costs more than just getting the watch.
> "If Apple claims the ECG function in its Apple Watch has therapeutic benefit for wearers, the watch would need to be included in the [Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods] in order to be legally supplied in Australia," a TGA spokesperson said to Gizmodo Australia in a statement.
This could be fixed if Australia allowed unapproved devices to be sold with a warning instead of outright banning them.
If you spend >$400 trying to slightly mitigate every random way of death, you would be spending 10s of millions of dollars. Of course, this is why these features exist in the first place: to hijack your mind and convince you that you can live forever.
I really want an Apple Watch for this and the EKG / Heart stuff. But I hate the idea of having another bit of technology on my wrist when I already have the iPhone with me. I like watches, the mechanical kind. I love them as the art of design and as fashion item to be match to what you are wearing (when appropriate). I do not want to give that up. In the end I will likely give in and get the Apple Watch just because I want to be around long enough to see my kid grow up.
Think of the Apple Watch as something that you can use to reduce your phone usage. If you get the one with cellular and GPS, you can go walking/biking/outside and be reachable while at the same time not staring at your phone all the time. Even when you are at home the justification, for me at least, to keep the phone closer was because I might get a call or message I need to respond to. With the Watch, the phone goes straight to its stand as soon as I get home knowing well that I'll get the notification on my watch. This is what's finally helping me wean off the constant need to keep my phone and pull it out to check instagram/hn/reddit repeatedly if I'm bored for even a second.
So I kicked the Reddit habit. I pretty much only read HN, BBCNews, ft.com and ArsTechnica at this point. I have stopped looking at my iPad, iPhone, etc. when watching TV, sport or a movie. The need to always look was really unhealthy. I am much happier now. I have like 5 books on my iPad that I have never quite finished over the last 2 years when before all this easy tech I would have read them quite quickly. It really bugs me. I am going back to paper books as it forces focus (no, I do not want a book only reader to carry as well). The only reason I really care about having the phone with me is for the family. Between email, slack, hangouts, AppleIM and Line it is all just to damn much.
agreed. the responder there is such classic apple. You should get the watch because it counts as not looking at your phone?? Even though you are still looking at a screen. Kind of bizarre logic to me but to each their own bud.
Also good for you man, ditchin some of the distractions for focus. I think some people get weirded out by me when i watch sports because i'm basically 100% in the zone and yelling constantly. Trying to soak up every detail of every play. not casually browsing and watching 2 / 3 screens at once. I can go hours without my phone without really noticing much honestly.
My perspective on this is just about the opposite. The watch is incredibly helpful, and isn't a distraction like my phone is. I have been wearing my watch and it has enabled me to leave my phone behind more often. It's been a way to wean myself off of technology, but still feel like I can reach people and they can reach me.
And I am the opposite of you! I've been wearing an apple watch for 2 years. I decided to try taking a break about a month ago, and it's been liberating. I didn't realize how often the watch was buzzing me over the course of the day, causing an almost constant level of of low anxiety. I never found a phone to be as intrusive. On the plus side, I have never missed a meeting when wearing my apple watch.
I had an earlier model, and ditched it after I forgot to put it on one day, and realized I didn't care. Having to have it charge for a bunch each day, and it not really being designed for overnight wear (as I understand it) really hold it back.
I bought a Fitbit Charge on impulse at an airport for a couple of hundred bucks, and have worn it every day since. I think I prefer it because the battery seems to last forever, it's light-weight, and it's not doing any additional features (although I think it can) than taking my heart rate, counting my steps, and a silent alarm. Would love the EKG feature tho.
> and it not really being designed for overnight wear (as I understand it) really hold it back.
I have a first generation Apple Watch. This is one of the things that annoyed me after buying it: you aint sleeping with it on if you want it to running the next morning.
I'm hopeful that batteries will get better and better, and eventually we'll be able to sleep with the watch on and have it track sleeping patterns, etc.
Apple bricked my series 0 by requiring a software update to activate the watch, and by not providing any watchOS versions still compatible with the series 0.
I just keep reading the comments and sadly the ECG feature is not available in Australia and may never be as Apple have never applied for the licenses.
I have an Apple Watch, and it's a love/hate relationship. I'd love to wear another more simpler watch but would lose so many features I always opt for the Apple Watch.
I do criticise the fact that only the Apple Watch contributes to their "Activity" app.
This might help: I frequently leave my iPhone at home, the watch is good enough on its own for messaging, calls, and email. Feels good not carrying a phone around.
I like the Apple watch fine, I had the Series 0 and also bought a Series 4. I never use them because I love my mechanical watch and you just look like a massive idiot wearing two watches.
Bummer really. Would love an Apple watch in a form-factor where it can complement a watch.
I like the concept of the Sony Wena, which is a smart watch strap which can be used with any classic mechanical watch (even if the current implementation isn't something I'd want) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qMKj_Z-ls
I have lots of criticisms for Apple, but this is truly an amazing thing that technology has brought us to this point. This is one of the few things that has me feeling like we "live in the future"
>I’m disappointed that Android Wear didn’t take off.
More competition would greatly increase innovation.
Android wearables have a chicken and egg problem. Manufacturers aren't innovating because nobody is buying and nobody is buying because there are no innovations.
Apple is fully vertically integrated so it can recoup the high R&D costs for new silicon and other components through the price of the unit but on Android platforms you have separate manufacturers for the vital components who are under pressure to be cost competitive as they don't get a slice of the profits of the final product so they won't invest in R&D until they see enough consumer demand which isn't there.
> If Apple Watch hadn’t been an immediate success, I’d like to think they’d still be pushing hard to make it so.
Apple Watch wasn't an immediate success - at least not in the form we see it today. WatchOS 1.0 was dramatically different from what we have today, with much less focus on health and more focus on 'connecting you with people' and stuff.
Apple kept working at it, paring out the stuff that wasn't useful (the side button was originally dedicated to a list of contacts to send messages to for example), and doubled down on the stuff that was (health). Clearly it has worked...
More battery life would also greatly increase innovation and adoption. You shouldn't have to wonder if your watch has enough juice to last your weekend trip when you forget to bring the charger. Especially if the watch is meant to be a life-saving beacon.
Regular quartz watches can go 3-10 years between battery replacements. Solar charging can increase that to 20 years or more. Self-winding mechanical watches will last a lifetime as long as you wear them regularly and have them serviced every now and then. How long does a modern smartwatch last in comparison?
> More battery life would also greatly increase innovation and adoption.
Doubt it. Apple watch is already a bigger business than netflix - the battery life is perfectly sufficient and making it longer would involve making it less capable.
Lots of current trends make way more sense if you look at smartphones as universal communication devices that just happen so far to be slabs in the hands. However, it doesn't make privacy prospects look promising.
It costs a premium to bake in features like this and to have them fault tolerant. Even a low income family could pitch in to buy a watch for their grandma if they really wanted it.
Although they do offer a prior model for $199, which is about as affordable as anyone could expect, this is unfortunately the Series 3, which doesn’t have this feature. Hopefully next year the “old model” will include this life-saving tech.
Does this feature work outside the US? Which countries are supported? https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/ has a country list but not for this feature specifically.
Emergency SOS should work in any country, as long as you have your iPhone nearby or you have a Cellular-enabled watch.
Your second link is specific to international roaming with the cellular-enabled watch, which gets complicated for various reasons (do you need an active SIM, does the modem on the watch support bands used in that country).
The latest Series 5 watch has improved the international SOS feature - from the Ars Technica review[1]:
> The improvements to the SIP and cellular bands allows the Series 5 to make use of its SOS feature in more than 150 countries now. If you find yourself in a bad situation, or the Watch's fall detection kicks in when you fall off your bike during a cycling workout, users with cellular Series 5 models can now call emergency services in various countries.
I just got my series 5 Apple Watch a couple of days ago, and the ECG functionality is a big part of why. There's history of heart disease in my family, and I've been to the doctor a few times with symptoms but of course when I get there they find nothing wrong. Maybe I'm a hypochondriac, who knows. Anyway, last time I went my doctor asked if I could share data from my watch, so figure I'd upgrade so I can get an actual
ECG – what a time to (hopefully) be alive!
I was able to ask my doctor to prescribe a halter monitor for 24 hours after similarly having intermittent "irregular heartbeat". I have fantastic insurance and have access to a major cardiac research center so ymmv but may be worth asking for the 24 hour study if you're concerned.
Ultimately what I got back was "yep you do have an irregular heartbeat sometimes. It's nothing threatening and you'll be fine." They additionally did a stress test and found that under exertion my heartbeat returns to normal so it was nice to have the peace of mind.
By "heart disease" I assume you mean angina/heart attacks. The Apple Watch can't detect those sorts of conditions (that requires multiple ECG leads, but the watch only has one).
There is nothing to fix: code blocks do (almost) exactly the right thing for code. (the indentation on the right is unnecessary and counterproductive, though, but that's not the main source of the complaint here.)
They are horrible for quotes, especially on mobile, but that's not what they are for. Admittedly, quotes are vastly more common than code on HN and HN could use a good quote formatting mechanism, but that's a missing feature, not a bug in code formatting.
There is no built-in quote formatting, so code blocking is basically the only way to have it show different. Attribution is important to some, and a proper quote format would help with that.
I don't think there's any formatting that is better than simply prepending quotes with a ">".
Formatting may improve such quotes that already begin with ">", but the problem is that people come up with their own inferior solutions instead of simply using ">". For example, some people try to use italics which are hard to see, hard to distinguish as quotes, and don't even render as italic on some of the HN native apps I've used.
If ">" was good enough for decades of email and usergroups, it's good enough for HN. No, your quotes in this one post doesn't need anything different or special.
What HN needs is a simple formatting-help blurb when writing a post to set people straight once and for all like reddit (or res?) had/has. The first line of it, if I wrote it, would be "Prepend > for quotes, prepend four spaces to format code."
Interesting there was a small Help link[0] next to the text areas for a quick minute, but they have since been removed. This was definitely there in the past month.
Digging is a very strenuous activity as well as shoveling. Anytime there's a major snow storm, enough people die from shoveling. So it probably detected that she was very stressed.
It was probably the same as the fall detection algorithm. Maybe it detected a high drop that didn't move back up (if they were on the ground digging) .. although it should have canceled with movement? Depends how that software was designed. From what the comments say, it seems like the Apple watch only does fall detection (and only if you're over a certain age by default)
Any time I see someone shovelling a sidewalk or driveway with something other than a sleigh shovel, I'm baffled at why they're not using a sleigh shovel.
It watches the heartbeat, probably arrhythmias specifically. You can't monitor blood pressure with just a watch. You need a blood pressure cuff for that.
(Tangent: anyhow, this reminds me of a great aphorism:
> If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
This can apply to many situations involving technical debt in software... is it really more effective to do many unseemly hacks rather just fix it properly?)
> As opposed to social media or GPS tracking apps, Schaeffer said the Apple Watch fall-detection feature offers extra reassurance by not relying on a person to alert first responders.
We're early enough in the adoption cycle that this is an undeniable benefit. Obviously, if nobody else is around, then it's life-saving. But I do worry about the long-term ethics. What if, when such watches become common, it becomes socially acceptable to just ignore people in life-threatening distress - "I don't need to call 911, their watch will have taken care of that." Just another nail in the societal coffin of distorting individualism as insularity.
Not a reason to ban this technology (or any similar action). Just something to keep in the back of our heads as the adoption curve progresses.
There was a study recently that basically debunked this theory. It was done by tracking real incidents through cameras in big cities in Europe. Long story short, the more people were there the more likely that someone offers help.
The study had some serious confounding issues which were not dealt with, though. For example, determining whether the bystanders were actually friends walking together with the target of the incident.
Also, the bystander effect deals with the probability of any individual helping out. It's still possible that there are two forces at play here: the declining probability of any individual helping vs the increasing probability that someone in an ever-larger group will still help despite the individual effect. It might be the case that there is a critical value N of bystanders where the second effect overpowers the first one.
Just a layman's guess here, but I strongly doubt the bystander effect is strong enough to overcome the chances of a single person helping. Note that for the bystander effect to happen, all the people in the vicinity have to not intervene, while for it to be defeated, it takes a single individual to act.
I doubt that as N increases the "network" effects are strong enough to overcome the chance that someone that will help, regardless of what the effect of "N-1" bystanders is, shows up.
That would be my guess as well, at least for large N. It might still show interesting behaviour for smaller group sizes, for instance a group of 2 vs a group of 6, or when the probability of a single person helping is comparatively low to begin with (for instance, in a bad neighbourhood known for scams).
The effect is informative regarding what to do when you need someone's help, though. Since the basis of the effect is the diffusion of responsibility, it helps to address a person directly when asking for help. Instead of asking whether anyone in the group can help with something, point to a particular person and ask them whether they can help. In this way, the refusal to help becomes explicit and people will be less likely do that. This is something I've observed from personal experience too.
In Europe, in a lot of countries there are programs such as the dutch BHV (BedrijfsHulpVerlener) program. Basically: companies need to have some people on staff with a basic first aid and fire evacuation training.
I have done this, and it has helped in mitigating the bystander effect. It means that there is a relatively large amount of people in the population that know what to do when accidents occur. IMO this makes bystanders who have done such programs to help, since they know how valuable time is in a lot of these situations.
Since I have done this training, whenever there is an accident on the streets and I am nearby, I will go help because I know what to do. And am therefor more likely to take initiative.
So I wouldn't immediately say this discount would be correct. It could also mean that some mitigation against the bystander effect is working.
"circumstance in which a party can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of another party who could face potential injury or death without being rescued"
In contrast, in 2007 a man in Baghdad noticed an injured man by the side of the road, and stopped his car (containing 2 children) to help. He was immediately killed by the US military for doing so; they were watching from an Apache helicopter and shot him dead for stopping to help.
This, in combination with Good Samaritan Laws (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law) make it more likely that people in Europe will help out. I remember stories in China that people would avoid helping someone in lieu of being blamed for any further injury caused, they would be taking the blame.
You might want to actually read that article daliusd. The bystander effect is just hypothesis and hasn't actually been observed to my knowledge.
In the mentioned Kitty Genovese incident the numbers were inflated and while it isn't mentioned here, there actually were police reports while it was happening.
I think local laws also play some part in this. There have been cases where people who help the victims have been accused of having harmed the victims. If not that, they're hassled by Police and other investigators during the course of the investigation.
This is the reason why Good Samaritan law is being brought into effect across the world.
More culture than law - my personal experience is that sub cultures within rigid legal systems that do not make it a good idea to lend aid (China for example) will do so regardless because of their subculture value system.
The bystander effect is probably complete nonsense, there have been some recent studies that tried to replicate its findings and they found the opposite to be true.
Here in China, the bystander effect is kind of have its effects, I mean sometime in bigcities, if an old man fell off unconsciously, lots of people will pass by, maybe they feel unconfortable with that, but there are some case which the old people accuse the one who help them knocking them down, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Shoulan_v._Peng_Yu , And CCTV has broadcast the case, and it cause a big discuss on the internet, and now lots of people, would not be a Good Samaritan when similar things happen, although have a guilty conscience.
It's good to look out for adverse side effects, but let's not jump to full-on post-100% deployment dystopias when we are still talking about a product < 1% of global population can even afford.
There are countries where people don't get fined for calling an ambulance due to personal financial damage. Even though misuse happens, it's minuscule compared to the benefit of general healthcare and not having to pay thousands of dollars for getting critical help.
I'm from the UK, so no I wouldn't have to pay (I don't think?) As far as I understand free ambulances are fairly unusual though. I can see either insurance companies not wanting to pay out in these situations, or govts charging in these situations.
Right. Only in the USA actually. Where an Ambulance costs ~2,5K for ALS and ~1,5K for BLS. The stupidity of this is crazy. I once had a bike crash in SF (dude opened the door on me) and someone called the ambulance. Not sure who. But I could walk so no use getting into the ambulance. The cop gave me a free ride down to a health clinic to get stitches. That didn't stop the city of SF sending me a bill for $400 for the ambulance. Bunch of thieves!
This problem doesn't exist in countries where there is public healthcare like in Australia, Canada and I believe most countries in Europe.
"You" (plural) in the USA have managed to make healthcare the means for the richer to become richest, and paying them with your blood. It goes beyond me how politicians with lobbyists (big pharma etc) allowed this to happen, don't send them all to hell where they belong, and reclaim your lives and your health.
And the fun fact is that US citizens call socialism "evil" while you sacrifice your health and/or your livelihood over a broken leg. I got a completely different definition what "evil" is, and oh btw I'm serving capitalism in EU (so don't start crying out "socialiiiiiist!!").
i'm not against gps tracking or other people tracking, i'm only against irresponsible usage of this data. that people will be tracked everywhere and these kind of features being implemented in such a connected world is unavoidable, and in reality besides the darker downsides it might have of irresponsible usage of the data, it has good potential to do very nice things for people.
the issue is not with the technology, but with people, as always. with the adoption of ipv6, iot and gps_in_everything etc. it's not a question about if the technology can be used for bad things, it's a question about if it will.
people who only believe int he darker side of this technology can easily avoid it by not participating. they should let people who willingly participate do so at their own 'peril' if that's their opinion.
privacy advocates are the new religion trying to push their views on everyone even though it's just a matter of opinion. some people love to be tracked everywhere for the benefits it can give them, other people hate it for the downsides it might have. its all a matter of opinion for users, and a question of integrity for its masters.
Do you have statistical results to support your bias to say Han Chinese are lack of empathy, or just based on some news which is a small ratio by comparing with the large population?
I was also curious, maybe because the statement was a surprise. There are certainly differences between cultures, so how would you even decide which empathy distribution was the best one?
This is a simple obvious addon that every connected portable device could implement. When I bought my fist and last smartphone (Android 2 at that time) after noticing it had an accelerometer on board I immediately thought of an app that could detect a fall when going at some speed, then start beeping for like say 10 seconds and in case the user didn't stop it (as in signaling "I'm ok") it would call emergency numbers sending them coordinates through SMS. I had other things to do at that time, and it seemed so obvious that I thought it already existed or someone soon would create something similar.
This really wouldn't work for phones. The accelerometer needs to be very high precision, which is why it only works on very recent Apple Watch models. The accelerometer also needs to be running all the time, even while the main processor on the device is sleeping. Also you need a reliable way to detect that the device is firmly attached to a human; it's not acceptable to call 911 when a phone falls on its own.
I know that hill, used to drive it most weekdays and have ran up it several times. Its not the steepest grade, but long with gnarly pavement at the bottom. Cars zip through there at 45 though its a 30mph zone because the lanes are quite wide. He's pretty lucky.
Until an Apple Watch is able to work with my ANT+ powermeter it's something I would avoid taking on a bike ride.
Garmin, Whahoo and other bike computers have had off crash alerts via a linked phone for, maybe, 10 years I think. Certainly since the Garmin Edge 1000 at least. That's a better fit for me as I'd never ride without my phone in a jersey pocket.
I'd always want a screen in front of me and not on my wrist.
Have you heard of that feature actually working? Fall detection is going to be _a lot_ less reliable from a phone than a wrist watch. In fact when I googled it one of the top three results is 'how do I turn off incident detection on my Garmin' due to false alerts.
Well I never actually used it myself as I haven't crashed for years but I know it's there. Equally though I've never heard of this working from an Apple Watch before so I don't think my anecdotal opinion on that is worth raising.
I do know I use stuff like VO2Max estimation, FTP estimation, recovery estimation, power zones analysis and hill descriptions for climbing while on the bike and those features are not available on an Apple Watch to my knowledge. I know for sure that Apple doesn't support ANT+ and that's important for me.
An Apple Watch might be a good companion if you're a runner or a cycle commuter but it appears to be pretty limited if you want to use it for cycle sport.
I agree that in this particular use case it was beneficial to wear an Apple Watch. But never ever wear a watch on your motorcycle. The force and impact can mess up your wrist in a crash. If you land on the watch it can push the case into your wrist potentially breaking it. Or hook behind something. If you do insist on a watch, wear a motorcycle jacket and long gloves over it.
Is this based on real accident statistics?
If you ride motorcycle without gloves and jacket and crash you will have much more severe injuries to care about much more certainly. So I would doubt wearing a watch is a significant risk factor.
I'd love to send you some pictures of the titanium plate in my wrist. Motorcycle accident, went over the bars in an angle that my wrists didn't like. Not caused by a watch but ever since I stopped wearing watches. Adding 100+ grams of steel near such a delicate bone is a recipe for disaster.
Also, as a developer, I don't care as much about losing functionality in my lower body. My wrists, hands and brains however are how I make my money. Even though I have full disability insurance, I still would much rather keep working than sit at home.
I'd love to get my Mom and Apple Watch but getting her to switch to iPhone is probably a bridge too far. How come no Android watches have this functionality?
I did this for my mom, who also refuses to switch to an iPhone. I got a cheapo/locked/unactivated 6s and paired the watch (non-cellular) to it. It gives me some peace of mind that at least it covers her at home; there have been a couple of times it got activated (fortunately false positives) and I can confirm that it definitely calls 911 in this scenario right from the watch if she doesn't acknowledge its warning in time.
I've been looking at the Garmin watches. I just wish they had a model between the vivosmart and the higher end watches that have Pulse Ox. I kind of hate Fitbit now with that they did with the Charge 3's pulse ox hardware being completely useless and Garmin seems nice but the vivosmart is kind of crappy compared to other fitness bands.
You need an iPhone to set it up, update it, and otherwise manage it. To whatever degree it works without the phone there you’re still going to need one.
Because the Apple Watch is made by Apple, the company that has taken pride in incompatibility as a defining feature since its first mainstream products.
What is the saddest is that some of Apple Watch's features are region-locked, recently heard a person complain about how he can't use the EKG functionality in his country. It could save some lives and we have georestrictions :/
Imagine the panic some mother is going to have when her two teenage sons get in a car to go somewhere, safely get that somewhere and for whatever reason high-five each other as hard as they possibly can.
On the flip side of this Samsung removed the oxygen saturation SPO2 feature from its phones in Canada and Cyprus (weirdly random choices). It was probably for legal reasons but you'd never find out why.
Here in Canada my dad who has COPD and IPF was using it to get a ballpark idea of his current blood oxygen percentage. It's not a medical device but it's (was) convenient for someone in his situation.
It seems fraudulent for a company to remove a feature without notice (yes probably buried on line 1,256 of an update). Not just an app but one that used a physical device/sensor on the phone removing it seems very wrong if not illegal.
It’s not really related to determination of use value or other qualitative questions. If my blender, or even my blood pressure machines, gets recalled, the company doesn’t break into my house to cut the wires for my safety. How is this not a basic violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is. People are putting microphones in their homes that Amazon controls and that serve no purpose but to let them spend money with Amazon more conveniently. The old definition of property doesn't really capture that does it?
I'd love to have this passive features, but the problems I have with smartwatches is that most of them are ugly, and I'm trying to minimize notifications in my life.
You can disable pretty much all notifications from the watch, separately from your phone. I only use my apple watch for activity tracking, music while cycling without my phone, and things like checking the weather (and time, I guess).
As for them being ugly, at least Apple has a wide selection of bands, and the watch itself is as unoffensive as a rounded rect can be, but I feel you there. It's not a work of art, but at least it's not the house arrest bracelets that fitbit sells.
I find that Apple Watch notifications are very useful because I can limit them to important ones (someone texting me, someone calling me, calendar events, reminders) and leave everything else to my phone.
If my watch tries to get my attention, I know it’s reasonably important. If my phone does, I don’t have to pull it out of my pocket if I don’t want to.
I agree the Apple Watch is really useful this way. But can't an "independent" device do this?
It does not need to be tied to a phone or an app ecosystem (android or iOS) to work. It does need a cellular connection, and some logic on the device, but that's about it. This device would be cheaper and affordable to a larger set of people than spending upwards of $500(estimated) on an apple watch.
The independent devices do exist. There are a few products designed for the elderly that have automatic fall detection. Usually they are a necklace type product connected to a call center. I’m not sure whether they rely on a cell network or WiFi.
So if you don’t want to buy a watch, then get a standalone product. But if you already have an Apple Watch, then this is a cool feature to have.
One could also carry around a calculator that's cheaper than their cellphone.
Not many folks under 60 walk around wearing heart monitors, fall detectors, and other health monitors. This is about those things becoming commonplace for everyone.
Life Alert, horrendous as their ads may be, would probably be surprised to hear that it's only now that you're finding a "device which can contact emergency services in the event of an accident" so life changing. As might OnStar, etc.
As well as what the sibling commentors have pointed out, Life Alert also never bothered to partner with a company that would put their system into a piece of consumer-electronics that the average healthy (maybe even young) adult would buy for themselves. Nobody wants to wear a LifeAlert bracelet and a watch/fitness-tracker; they want their watch/fitness-tracker to just have that functionality. And so they make a choice, and end up dying in a ditch somewhere.
There are many good ideas that exist out there that are "unknown" because the product they are in misses some aspect of how consumers would wish to consume them. My favorite was that the Tesla Roadster wasn't the first electric car, but it was the first that I could see myself buying at some point.
The nice thing about this being a feature of the watch is that the watch brings a bunch of great stuff all on its own. That it can also call emergency services or diagnose Afib is like bonus time.
> In people younger than 55, Apple Watch’s positive predictive value is just 19.6 percent. That means in this group — which constitutes more than 90 percent of users of wearable devices like the Apple Watch — the app incorrectly diagnoses atrial fibrillation 79.4 percent of the time. (You can try the calculation yourself using this Bayesian calculator: enter 0.001 for prevalence, 0.98 for sensitivity, and 0.996 for specificity).
> The electrocardiogram app becomes more reliable in older individuals: The positive predictive value is 76 percent among users between the ages of 60 and 64, 91 percent among those aged 70 to 74, and 96 percent for those older than 85.
Why is that? IANAPhysician, but this seems like a fairly rare malady in this age group. Do we really want all of these people rushing to the hospital? If no one trusts the Apple Watch's diagnosis, how useful could it be?
You're unlikely to get rushed to the hospital due to your watch asking you if you're OK while you're consciously engaged in strenuous activity. It's a sign, not a diagnosis.
I think the rate is low enough that most people are not getting multiple spurious notifications to rush to the hospital, so trust is probably not the issue. The only problem I see is hospitals being overwhelmed, but again, I'm not sure if we're really overloading them.
Sure, most people are not going to hospital at the suggestion of their Apple watch. However, of those who do go to hospital, nearly all are false positives. This will lead hospital staff to distrust the Apple watch. It may not have that effect on Apple watch owners...
The fact that the baseline rate is so low is why this sort of widespread testing isn't really helpful, and can do more harm than good. The wider the net you cast, and the more rare the target condition, the lest useful the test becomes.
To be fair, almost all in home medical alert systems use a fixed base station. So even if they wore both, the Life Alert bracelet would only save lives in a ditch very near the home.
This aspect, I absolutely agree with - the differing markets for devices. I hope I would not need to buy such a device for 20 or 30 more years. But I do own a Fitbit. And may own an Apple Watch. Very different sets, with differing benefits.
As with everything, there is some give and take, but one point in favor of something like a watch doing fall detection is a potentially better anti-false-positive detection. Set your life alert pendant down on the dresser a little hard and it may think you've fallen, and maybe you don't hear the callback for verification, so you get a visit from the police in your shower after they've forced the front door open. This happened to my grandfather ;-). The Apple Watch should be able to correctly avoid a false fall detection in that situation because you will have taken it off your wrist (though not strictly necessary since it is waterproof) and it knows that it's not on your wrist.
All of those services rely on manual intervention from staff in a call center.
If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.
I do have a horse in the race. Not the one you might think, but as a paramedic/firefighter, I'm not sure you can argue that "attempts to verify (human or otherwise) that there is a medical incident before dispatching EMS" is automatically worse than "calls 911 from the device automatically".
> If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.
They all have (see my sibling comment about Automatic Fall Detection), and I agree.
LifeAlert makes you press a button, it is designed for people who might fall off the toilet, not someone who might fall off a mountain bike in the wilderness and be unconscious for hours.
OnStar is part of an entire car.
This is a watch with greater capability than both put together. Let it be awesome.
LifeAlert definitely has accelerometer based fall detection, not just a button press. It doesn't have a cell radio though, so it isn't useful when it's away from its base station.
Life alert & OnStar are fairly singular function devices. Life alert is marketed pretty much exclusively to the elderly and does not have the ability to automatically call 911 in this way. OnStar is available in a single manufacturer's vehicles only, and you can't take it with you when you step onto the sidewalk. A device that monitors vitals as well as other potential situations and automatically gets an ambulance brought to your locations is quite a bit different than either of these.
I'm not claiming Apple has done something revolutionary. It's an evolution that builds on and combines various capabilities in a novel way. It's the sort of thing I could imagine seeing growing up watching "future" tv shows (Beyond 2000 ftw) and I love when technology produces something like that.
Not really. All those other services require the person to hit a button to trigger it, which they can't do while unconscious. The Apple watch called automatically on its own.
$10/month if you factor in the need for a cellular plan for the watch?
$15/month for a fall detection device vs $399 + $10/month buys a lot of months. Yes, I know the Apple Watch does more, but I wasn't the one who tried to make the comparison.
Does the Apple Watch stay on the phone with you until EMS arrives? Is it capable of giving medical information to dispatch?
Another "Apple was the first to do this!"... "No it wasn't"... "Well, the cost is different!"... circumlocution.
I could care less, either way. Whichever device gives me less false positives (but not false negatives) works best for me as a first responder.
I had no idea some services could be so expensive. Life Alert starts at $50/month. Depending on what you get from it, the Apple Watch would be cheaper in less than a year. Interesting!
I bought an Apple Watch when a friend of mine showed me the EKG function. Also bought an iPhone. Realized that this is the future for us all, so I bought a lot of Apple stock.
> Can Apple watch be programmed to call relative in case of hard fall / unresponsiveness like this?
Yes.
> After the call ends, your watch sends a message to your emergency contacts with your location letting them know that your watch detected a hard fall and dialed emergency services. [0]
As I mention above, the way I did this was to buy a low-cost/locked/unactivated iPhone 6s and paired the watch to it. It thus provides in-home monitoring of such events; I can confirm that it works well since it got inadvertently activated a couple of times (the first watchOS version with this feature seemed to be prone to false positives) and I had to talk to the emergency agent on her behalf to state that everything was ok for now.
Can I have one iPhone (in USA) and two watches - one in USA (me), another in Europe with my dad attached to local European SIM card to call local European number if he falls?
I don't think so unfortunately - the cellular watches are weird in that they must be on the same cellular network as the associated iphone. The recipe I suggested above works with the non-cellular version of the watch and counts on being on the same wireless network as the phone. So imo, you will need one iphone per watch. However, I have been able to get refurbished iphone 6s devices for as little as $60; you probably don't want anything older than 6s as it is the oldest device that can still run iOS 13 and thus future proof for just a little bit.
You are right - that should work well as well I believe due to its 6s internals. It's a good idea too: in the US the SE can be found even cheaper than the 6s.
Now - I just want that hydration sensor that was teased a while back. So many health conditions that accurate information about hydration could assist.
Boy I'm sure he was relieved he had his APPLE WATCH™ with him. I am sure we are all imagining right now how horrible things would be for us and our families if we were in such circumstances without an APPLE WATCH™. Good thing black friday and Christmas are coming up so I can gift all my loved ones an APPLE WATCH™ just in case, not doing so would clearly be negligent and uncaring on my part.
It's not that, my problem is it's an article which is basically an advert which at the time of writing is top of the front page with +800 upvotes and full of comments talking about how great the product is. Talk about "Hacker" "News".
One nice thing about GMs "On Star" is it will call for help automatically if there's been an airbag deploy. I was very surprised that other car manufacturers didn't start doing the same thing when GM did (they've had this feature for at least 15 years) given how cheap cell phone technology is and how the sensors to deploy airbags are reliable and in every car.
The watch deactivates most features and locks as soon as you take it off of your wrist. You'd need to re-enter your password to unlock it. so it is unlikely that throwing it would trigger the feature.
Also from their initial demo, the fall detection uses more input than just a fast falling motion. Apparently humans fall in a specific way that the watch detects
Hopefully it is better at detecting hard falls than my series2 was at detecting the beginning of a swimming workout... I'd be driving down the road at 30 mph brushing my hair and my apple watch would ask me if I was starting a swimming workout. And I had to turn the knob to unlock to tell it no because it automatically locks you down when a swimming workout starts.
That said, the cupholder in my riding lawn mower squeezes my iPhone 8 buttons into SoS mode. The first time it called 911 and I picked it up 30 minutes to a missed call and a text. No ambulance. Next time I mowed it, it called 911 again. No call and no text. I guess I made the 911 pranker list? Yay? Hopefully I don’t need it.
Wonder what makes this guy get an ambulance and me in South Bend Indiana get one text?
Fall detection on Apple Watch doesn’t just dial emergency services like Emergency SOS does, they could hear you mowing your lawn and probably assumed you called by mistake (it happens).
When fall detection activates a 60 second timer starts and the watch vibrates like mad trying to get your attention, if you do not dismiss the alert not only does it dial emergency services and text your location to registered emergency contacts, it actually starts speaking to the operator stating that you have fallen as well as providing your GPS coordinates.
The assumption is that you manually activating emergency SOS implies you are alert enough to speak with the operator, but somebody unresponsive after a fall needs the device to ensure they get assistance even though they are incapacitated.
Yeah or like, what if you just fall and decide to stay laying down for a minute but you’re actually fine?
I wonder if the fall has to happen in combination with some other health metrics that it senses? Does there even need to be a falling down? What if you have a heart attack while you’re strapped into your parked car and you don’t fall? Does it call then?
Seems very hard to trigger inadvertently, so it makes sense to me that they use an algorithm that factors in the heart rate and the fall trajectory and velocity.
It alarms (rather loudly for a tiny watch) and taps you vigorously asking if you're ok before calling. You have plenty of time to cancel the call to emergency services before it's made.
I saw this story, but didn't know it was in my hometown and current city of Spokane, WA (~200k people, growing city). Very cool. The hill where he fell is the crux of our annual Bloomsday race (running/walking/wheelchair, 12km) which ~50k participants each year. Hence the name "doomsday hill" in the article.
If you live in country where emergency services number is not 911 there is sometimes a forward from 911 to the local number like 112 or phone may detect the local emergency services number.
Problem is that not all countries have location detection for emergency calls.
Side story: I just bought an iPhone 11, and proceeded to put it into a new case. During this process the phone tried to call 911 two times. The process was only stopped when I hurriedly cancelled. I can't imagine I'm the only one.
Am I the only one concerned about the possible repercussions (to the wearer, I mean) of triggering a law enforcement response?
There have been multiple cases now where (American, obviously) Law Enforcement have brutalized and injured people experiencing diabetic shock.
And what if the fall and unconsciousness is the result of illicit drug use? Surely the wearer doesn't want a call to 911 to be the default behavior in that case.
Does Apple act with greater discretion in jurisdictions where law enforcement are known to be criminally brutal or corrupt? I suspect that the answer is "no."
Since people of color experience a greater proportion of negative outcomes from law enforcement contact, I surmise this feature is far more useful for white people.
Don't get me wrong - it's a cool feature for sure. But until we untangle law enforcement (and state brutality) from medical and fire response, it's potentially a dangerous one for some users.
> There have been multiple cases now where (American, obviously) Law Enforcement have brutalized and injured people experiencing diabetic shock.
Those incidents are reprehensible and should never be forgotten, and I don't intend to excuse them or the culture that enables them, but statistically they are extremely rare. Even in the worst parts of America, in a medical emergency you are better off with emergency treatment than not.
And if you don't want the watch to call 911, for whatever reason, you can turn that feature off.
An interesting take but I think, even factoring in police brutality, it is still the morally correct choice to call 911.
>There have been multiple cases now where (American, obviously) Law Enforcement have brutalized and injured people experiencing diabetic shock.
Given the odds, there are likely far more cases of people being seriously injured or even killed from diabetic shock that do not pop up on the public perception radar because they are not attached to a social spectacle.
>And what if the fall and unconsciousness is the result of illicit drug use? Surely the wearer doesn't want a call to 911 to be the default behavior in that case.
I don't know if that's your (our?) call to make. Whether a drug abuser wants to die from their drug abuse is, I think, a deeply personal choice. Unless they have a DNR (which they can get if they are so inclined), I think the right choice is to try to intervene and get them to survive before throwing the book at them.
FWIW, there are many laws centered around "forgiving" people involved in incidents like this to increase the response/survival rate. For example, I live in a college town and if you report someone (underage even) overdosing on alcohol or any other illicit drug, the police are instructed to not pursue a criminal case against the overdoser or anyone who reports the incident (even if they themselves are breaking the law). The point being that anyone who finds themselves in situations like this will hesitate to call for help, and laws like these increase the odds that people in trouble get the help they need in time.
>Does Apple act with greater discretion in jurisdictions where law enforcement are known to be criminally brutal or corrupt? I suspect that the answer is "no."
Two things here. First, I don't know what "greater discretion" would imply here - they wait longer before calling, or adjust the threshold of what constitutes a fall? Second, "jurisdictions where law enforcement are known to be criminally brutal or corrupt" is a deeply subjective topic, probably one which Apple rightfully should have zero cards in. I also fear that you will find that districts that engage in brutality also happen to have a large minority population (since you state white people are not affected by police brutality at the same rate that minorities are), and this will further reduce the usefulness of this feature for those people.
>Since people of color experience a greater proportion of negative outcomes from law enforcement contact, I surmise this feature is far more useful for white people.
While you make a good point with conditions like diabetic shock and presumably seizures, I think this feature was generally meant for people who have lost consciousness (as the subject in the article did). I think even the most egregiously corrupt police force in the country would still call in an ambulance for a guy who has passed out rather than proceed to taze him or something.
Why would people buy an expensive watch like this when a simple bicycle helmet could save their life? Especially if it is a MIPS helmet (because the previous non-MIPS ones apparently did not work despite all the claims they did)
There is an absolute gulf in quality and functionality between the Apple Watch and other smart watches. It's not like the smartphone industry at all. Nobody can compete with the Apple Watch and nobody is even vaguely trying.
It's common in the "sports watch" side of things from the likes of Garmin. I'm not sure how well they do for things like the elderly falling though, they're more targeted at bike crashes and the like.
My girlfriend has an Apple Watch. We wrestle and practice jiu-jitsu in bed sometimes. When I was squeezing her wrists, the watch buzzed and asked if she wanted to call 911.
The first watchOS version that had this monitoring built-in seemed to be prone to false positives. However, the watch first asks you if you are ok and if you do not acknowledge so in a few seconds, then it dials out.
Right. The other day I accidentally slammed my watch into the wall and it started asking me if I was OK. You have a chance to say that everything is fine and that you don’t need help before it starts calling emergency services and telling people you’re in trouble.
I know apple watch can do such things, I just dont like how they hype this, I do think this is a soft sell, somehow apple is evil because they sent the message that Apple watch can save your life, so people will buy it or discuss it , it kind of become viral. while actually it doesn't guarantee it will behave the same when you have a heart failure.
There was a good bit by Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal where she hired a professional stuntwoman; she was unable to trick the watch into thinking she had fallen, but the stuntwoman was able to by taking some hard falls.
I can think of a lot of things you can do that will make the portion of your body that the watch is attached to take a really hard hit. How does it not have a high false positive rate?
It's probably more about instantaneous acceleration. Nothing you can do with your own two arms and legs will ever cause you to experience a deceleration as hard as what happens when you fall from a standing position onto a hard surface. (Unless you ran full-tilt into a brick wall, I suppose.)
My understanding is they are very specific about this not being able to detect heart attacks - hence why I'm hesitant to speculate about the exact sequence of events above
so how does this work? does the apple watch use siri to say something via phone or does your watch only starts a call and you need to speak? how is your location transmitted technically?
Me too, though it was probably an SMS, not a call. US emergency services accept text messages.
The article says:
"His watch messaged emergency medical services at 12:02 p.m., and an ambulance was there within a minute."
Though this seems to be contradicted by the previous paragraph:
"His Apple Watch had called 911 through the fall-detection feature, which sends out an alert if the wearer is immobile for 60 seconds after a fall."
Edit: It makes a call, according to Apple's docs [0].
> Me too, though it was probably an SMS, not a call. US emergency services accept text messages.
Point of clarification - US Emergency services can accept text messages. Currently it's only available in certain areas, and it's up to each local ESD/911 call center to implement it if they choose.
I am happy that Bob is safe.
We still need a smart watch that can function using a battery or at a capacity of a normal watch to make this event a bigger success.
We got a call recently from my elderly grandmother’s Apple Watch letting us know that she’d fallen. This feature was the main reason we bought the watch for her, and it worked when it mattered. (She’s fine.)
> Then his helmeted head hit the ground so hard it knocked him unconscious — hard enough for his Apple Watch to feel it.
> “A hit that hard could have killed me if I weren’t wearing it,” Burdett said. He had to replace the helmet.
Letter to the editor: the last sentence is a non-sequitur.
You have to replace a bike helmet any time it takes an impact, even if it isn't "so hard," because even if it doesn't look damaged the foam may be compressed and useless for a future crash.
The gist of it is that car seats do not help nearly as much as we hope. I got the impression that there ought to be a car with a built-in, non-removable car seat would work better. I'd imagine this would be an instant hit in the SUV market. However, no automaker seems to take up on the challenge. Is there a legislative obstacle that prevents automakers from doing this?
Unless you’re leasing, I don’t think parents would be thrilled to have a seat unusable after a few years. And even if you are, sometimes you’re transporting people or large items other than your child.
People want safety, but they also don’t expect to actually be in a serious accident.
Why does everyone who praises Apple on HN qualify it with the fact that they don’t like Apple for other reasons? Also, Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.
It's not specific to this place. It's an effective persuasive argument technique. Say you want to praise Apple for something. Since praising Apple to Apple fans is preaching to the choir, your target is people who are not currently huge Apple fans. So, you begin by saying "hi, I am one of you, a person who isn't a big Apple fan." Now that you've established yourself as a member of the in-group, you drop your argument, "this aspect of Apple is good." Maybe you qualify it with "pretty good" to keep from tripping any alarms.
Note: that's not to say that the speaker is being in any way deceptive. People naturally evolve and reinvent more effective speech patterns, often unconsciously.
I think it has a second persuasive characteristic, which is simply to contrast with the claimed baseline.
This second characteristic really grates on me when it comes in the form "I don't even know anything about X and even I know this is bad!" -- wherein people somehow leverage their lack of credibility on a subject as a source of authority.
But I think it works because it makes the claim bigger by changing what it's being compared to.
It isn't technically virtue signing since it's meant to be persuasive.
The post further down (well, up now) that's calling attention to the fact that the guy should replace his helmet because he used it (something that is common knowledge for most people young enough to only have worn single use helmets and is literally printed on the helmet and packaging) is a better example of virtue signaling since it states something basically everyone already accepts as fact and is only tangentially related to the article in the first place.
Unfortunately, the term virtue signaling has taken on a political meaning so you can't say it and expect the internet even if you mean it in the technical sense.
I for one can't stand their closed eco system and am not impressed by the way Apple is merely picking features that others have funneled through their own innovation processes (seeing what works, what doesn't) - furthermore claiming it as "theirs" not giving any nod to those who went before. Etc. Etc.
So I completely understand why someone would qualify their opinion that this is a nifty good feature by stating as much. Automatic emergency dialing is one feature that my Galaxy Watch doesn't have, that I'd like to have.
Going back to my first paragraph: Appled "claimed" AoD in their launch, however the Galaxy Watch has a great always on display with battery that lasts for days - even longer than the S3 Frontier I had before it. Pebble was the original gangster of course, pretty much inventing the whole market - screen always on for 10 days in the PTS! - but now that they're gone (RIP - all of my Pebbles broke several times so I know why) Garmin has the #1 best battery life by far. I really, really like Tizen however so went with that being a Samsung S-series owner and appreciating the fantastic integration.
They have better PR, arguably better products, and a more likeable CEO than other tech hyper-corporations. But they are fundamentally no different than any other self-aware pile of cash.
It is an inaccurate descriptor in my opinion. The cash isn't making decisions. The "corporation" isn't making any decisions. People are making decisions. Corporations are just groups of people just like unions are groups of people and governments are groups of people. Whenever one of these entities commits some malicious act against someone it is because people decided to do it to other people. Framing it in any other way is just an attempt to make us feel better about the reality of the situation.
Apple is undoubtedly a contentious company, and many of their fans are highly obsessive... I think OP is just letting people know that they're more if a critic than an obsessive fan, thus showing contrast with their praise of the feature.
Probably because there is often a lot of unqualified praise or unexamined belief that all they do is incredible and right. In order to avoid the appearance of that, sometimes people qualify their praise in the way I have done.
Apple has a long history of very enthusiastic fans that can at times crossover into being obnoxious. Apple is hardly unique in that but it does seem to be somewhat more prevalent for them. Some commenters likely don't want to be quickly dismissed as fawning fans lacking perspective of Apple's place in the world.
Apple’s detractors fit this bill far more than its fans do. The online hate Apple gets is nothing short of ridiculous compared to how responsible a corporate citizen they’ve been for as long as I can remember. Most of the time when I see Apple fans in a conversation, it’s countering badly informed anti-Apple circlejerking. One example that comes to mind is the whole Foxconn thing. Apple got massive amounts of backlash for the working conditions there, when virtually every other manufacturer uses them too and received only a handful of the same criticism. Apple dramatically tightened their standards and expanded their vetting process for third-party suppliers (which were already in place). Everyone else? Next to nothing or actually nothing.
It’s completely backward in the same way as the stereotype of vegans. As someone who spent some time as a vegetarian, I quickly realized that most vegans/vegetarians try not to make a big deal out of their dietary choices. On the off chance someone does ask about it, they quickly explain their motivations and hope to move on. Then the next hour of conversation involves something like the omnivores trying to list off every animal type they’ve ever eaten, alphabetically. Alligator, beef (wait, does beef count? Probably not, okay let’s say bison), cuttlefish (wait do individual fish count or no?), etc.
Apple fans (and vegans) get a bad rap because they’re in the minority and those in the majority are simply used to the status quo.
Maybe it's the circles I travel in, but I have seen way more knee-jerk Apple haters--here, on the internet at large, and IRL--than I've ever seen knee-jerk Apple apologists.
Unbridled praise of any large corporation on HN is an invitation to accusations of fanboyism. Prefacing the comment with some sort of deprecation has become a cultural element of immune response to flamewars on HN.
I praise Apple’s largely charitable, low-ROI intense commitment to systemwide accessibility whenever possible. They are light-years ahead of everyone else in that department.
I disagree: There's over 200 million adults & 96% cell phone usage, which would translate to about 2 million disabled at 1%. If they even get 1/10 of that, assuming a device cost average around $700, you're talking about $140,000,000 per upgrade cycle. That seems more than enough to build in decent accessibility. And they get about 44% market share, so that's actually about $660,000,000 per upgrade cycle, which, if measured in cash of $100, is literally tons of money in profit!
In TFA, the (quoted) preceding sentences are repeatedly accentuating the severity of the crash and directly implying that the severity is the reason for the replacement. The severity has has nothing to do with the need to replace the helmet, i.e., it does not follow logically.
This is an interesting logic discussion. :-) Does the term non sequitur apply to correctly formed statements where the conclusion of the statement is incorrect? I would be inclined to agree with TheSpiceIsLife and say no. Because the article is based on limited sources, the article's conclusion about helmet replacement is incorrect, even if it's well-formed.
EDIT: Here's an interesting list of non sequiturs, many of which fit the same pattern as the article. I think loeg is probably right after all.
This makes little sense. You’re imposing your sense of morality on an entity that is not beholden to the public good of mankind. If you want that that kind of service for everyone for betterment reasons, then demand your legislators to have the government invest in such a technology and have them distribute it. If Apple wants to do something for more reasons, that’s their prerogative. It’s no different than demanding that drug companies relinquish all patents on life saving drugs so that availability is greater and the product is cheaper while being dismissive of the development costs and efforts to get there.
Because that was Apple watch and not wearable tech generally?
I had and loved my Withings Steel HR watch, but it cannot do this. Nor can most of the "wearable tech".
I disagree. When Apple Watch detects an event that it considers as a fall, it asks the wearer if he/she is ok. Failure to respond then triggers the 911 call. So being unconscious had a lot to do with it.
Alternate headline: “Potentially Life-saving Tech Works as Advertised”. I know, I know, it’s a human interest story and the regular folks might not know this. But my first thought reading the headline was, “it better call, or I’m going to be puzzling how to get a refund in the afterlife.”
This is one seemingly tiny, new feature of the device. He might not have bought the device for this feature, or even have known that it was there. Or rather, the people reading might have not bought the device for this feature, or even have known that it was there. I think this is what makes the story popular enough to be going around.
FWIW, unless you are over 60 it's not enabled by default. Presumably this is to minimize false alarms, but if you want this feature enabled, you should make certain it's enabled.
Additionally, some of us who have this watch and this feature enabled want to share stories that verify the feature works for some people ergo could work if something happens to us (and this also helps us to rationalize our purchase!)
The feature has to be turned on and configured. The cycling group I am in has had dozens of people realize they were accidentally forgoing this feature while wearing the watch, so the impact of this article is potentially huge.
Does Apple marketing guarantee that it will work? I bought watches for my parents, partly because of the feature, but I never had the impression that it was guaranteed to correctly detect all (or even most) life threatening situations
> I never had the impression that it was guaranteed to correctly detect all (or even most) life threatening situations
Apple Watch detects falls, not unconsciousness. It doesn't detect heart attacks either.
> Apple Watch cannot detect all falls. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger fall detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall. [0]
I was not aware of this feature in Apple watches. I probably still won't buy one, but it's nice to know it exists and it's a feature I'll look for in other similar devices.
Don't forget to wear your watch! You've got wife and kids for cryin' out loud! Never leave home without wearing a watch! Or maybe just get a really good helmet and don't bike down "Doomsday Hill" lmao
As a younger man I took pride in not needing any technical assistance to get around in the world. Now in middle age, and with a diagnosed electrical-type heart problem, I'm pretty happy to have the gizmo help me out. This makes those rare times when I do venture out without any tech on my person particularly pleasurable; I feel like I'm getting away with something naughty and yet all I'm doing is being an unassisted human. If jogging with a health monitor is normalized, well, that's ok with me.
It seems highly likely to me that the Culture of Fear that pervades affluent western societies will exactly lead to what you predict.
And those of us that do not wear a permanent tracking device will have some sort of financial (insurance rates) and emotional punishments (peer pressure/blackmail) inflicted on us.
Speaking for myself, I'm ready to die when its time. If my body is so weak and knackered that I cannot even go for a bike ride without medical assistance then I reckon it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil and make way for someone else.
I can understand why you'd feel the risk of such an event is sufficiently low that it's not worth buying/charging/wearing a "permanent tracking device", particularly if you also feel it doesn't respect your privacy adequately. And I agree our collective tolerance to risk is going down over time. But I'm curious about this part of your comment:
> Speaking for myself, I'm ready to die when its time. If my body is so weak and knackered that I cannot even go for a bike ride without medical assistance then I reckon it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil and make way for someone else.
This could happen because of a hit-and-run driver or because of some other temporary medical condition; either might be completely resolved with the right treatment. I think a better way to look at it is about your quality of life afterward. If you're terminally ill or of very advanced age with a poor prognosis for recovery, then I can see why you'd want a "do not resuscitate" order, would disable this feature, etc. Otherwise why not get help?
Agree about the quality of life afterwards being the most important issue. I have seen too many people who have lingered "alive". I suspect that if I get knocked down then there is a dichotomy of outcomes:
1) unpleasant, painful, survivable, not time-critical, not life-changing
2) major trauma, life can be saved with a time-critical intervention. Prognosis post-event is for a decreased quality of life. Would probably die if left without unusually quick ER.
I can only see the watch being useful for #2: the exact situation where I think it would be better that I die.
If you feel your privacy is violated then contribute to projects like GadgetBridge and PineTime, both are in major need of developers and would allow you to reap the benefits without the tracking you seem to fear.
Then his helmeted head hit the ground so hard it knocked him unconscious — hard enough for his Apple Watch to feel it.
“A hit that hard could have killed me if I weren’t wearing it,” Burdett said. He had to replace the helmet.
Sigh. Bicycle helmets prevent neither concussions nor death: by design, according to all epidemiological studies and according to the manufacturers of bicycle helmets.
You are misrepresenting the research. The research is regarding the effect of public policy (making it illegal to bike without a helmet) on bicycle accidents.
> With regard to the use of bicycle helmets, science broadly tries to answer two main questions... “what is the effect of a public health policy that requires or promotes helmets?” and... “what is the effect of wearing a helmet?”
> The linked paper by Dennis and colleagues investigates the policy question and concludes that the effect of Canadian helmet legislation on hospital admission for cycling head injuries “seems to have been minimal
To me, it seems like you both failed to accurately represent the linked article.
The linked editorial does not limit itself to discussing the impact of public health policy. It does start with a link to an article that attempts to quantify the effects of a Canadian helmet law. However, it then discusses a number of other papers and the general methodological issues with trying to estimate effects of wearing a helmet.
However, the article certainly does not endorse the claim you are responding to: "Bicycle helmets prevent neither concussions nor death"
The conclusion reached by the editorial is that the safety effects of helmet use are complicated and contingent which makes the results of any study of the effects highly dependent on the methodology. (There could be a positive effect in NYC but a negative effect in the Netherlands or a positive effect for riders of street bikes, but a negative effect for cruisers)
> In any case, the current uncertainty about any benefit from helmet wearing or promotion is unlikely to be substantially reduced by further research.
the article certainly does not endorse the claim you are responding to: "Bicycle helmets prevent neither concussions nor death"
Incorrect. The article makes the strong and accurate claim that there has been no clear, measurable proof that helmets prevent concussion or death.
This should come as no surprise. When cyclists are hit by cars or trucks the force of the collision is generally so huge that the aorta are ruptured, internal organs (including the brain) are torn from their moorings, bones are cracked.
Helmets are incapable of preventing any of the above.
What _is_ capable of preventing such deaths is the removal of the private automobile from the public roads.
> The article makes the strong and accurate claim that there has been no clear, measurable proof that helmets prevent concussion or death.
I am curious what part of the editorial leads you to draw that conclusion. The editorial specifically acknowledges that there is evidence that individual helmet use does reduce head injury rates. The entire point of the editorial is to discuss how to reconcile the individual use studies with the canadian helmet law study.
The point is not that "helmets don't pervent head injuries", but that helmets, and specifically, helmet focused public policy, have a marginal impact on safety and distract us from other more effective policy interventions.
> an emphasis on helmets reflects a seductively individualistic approach to risk management (or even “victim blaming”) while the real gains lie elsewhere. It is certainly true that in many countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, cyclists have low injury rates, even though rates of cycling are high and almost no cyclists wear helmets. This seems to be achieved through interventions such as good infrastructure; stronger legislation to protect cyclists; and a culture of cycling as a popular, routine, non-sporty, non-risky behavior.
Removing private automobiles from public roads is completely unnecessary to achieve much better bicyclist safety.
I am not misrepresenting the paper: it attempts to explain why countries with mandatory helmet laws see _no_clearly_measurable_reduction in KSI (Killed, Seriously Injured) rates.
More cyclists wear helmets in those jurisdictions (parts of Canada, all of Australia and N.Z.) and yet ecological studies fail to clearly demonstrate any benefit from helmets. If you sprayed a field with RoundUp and saw no difference in the number of weeds compared to an unsprayed field you would start to wonder about the effects of the treatment.
> I am not misrepresenting the paper: it attempts to explain why countries with mandatory helmet laws see _no_clearly_measurable_reduction in KSI (Killed, Seriously Injured) rates.
And in doing so, it goes to some effort to explain why you cannot, from that, conclude that helmets have no effect on individual accident outcomes, all other things being equal. (Mainly because all other things aren't equal, and it's very difficult to devise a methodology that makes them so.)
Nobody is saying that you shouldn't wear a helmet. The point is that Helmets are at best only a marginally effective public policy to make cyclists safer.
> an emphasis on helmets reflects a seductively individualistic approach to risk management (or even “victim blaming”) while the real gains lie elsewhere. It is certainly true that in many countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, cyclists have low injury rates, even though rates of cycling are high and almost no cyclists wear helmets. This seems to be achieved through interventions such as good infrastructure; stronger legislation to protect cyclists; and a culture of cycling as a popular, routine, non-sporty, non-risky behaviour.
Fallen with helmet on a couple of times hard enough to require a new helmet. These falls were a non-event and so they were never reported. The lack of reporting is likely causing this.
The injuries prevented by a helmet with a fall are essentially non-events. The helmet makes no measurable difference to the stuff you care about: dying or being brain-damaged.
Yeah, people think bike helmets are miracle devices like seat belts, and that it’s a moral failing not to use one, but they sadly don’t provide that much protection.
It depends on what you mean by planted. For "some Apple PR person called or e-mailed" then, yes, the chance is non-zero. That's part of how journalism works. A story that's both true and interesting should be published, and it also benefitting some company should have as little impact as when it hurts that company, i. e. none.
If you're talking about a Seattle Times journalist or editor literally being bribed into running the story, you've gone off the deep end. Any such attempt by Apple would give some journalist a once-in-a-lifetime chance to expose a major scandal. It would expose Apple, and any journalist and their publications to risks far larger than whatever the value of a positive, but rather minor, story in a second-tier US newspaper is worth, etc.
"question everything" is stupid advise. Do you question if water isn't a deadly poison every time you drink it? Do you verify your spouse's DNA every time you see them, to prevent them being replaced by imposters?
Of course not, because it's impossible (also insane). Try establishing the usefulness of, say, vaccines from first principle: it would require running hundreds of clinical trials, all by yourself (don't trust anyone!), at costs in the billions of dollars, and taking far longer than your life.
And remember that you will also somehow need to convince yourself of the power of whatever statistics you use in those trials. You need to redo everything, all the way back to, at best, "parallel lines don't intersect". Because that Pythagoras wasn't even considered trustworthy by his compatriots, so why should you?
Realistically, you, like everyone, make thousands of decisions every day and need heuristics to get anything done. Most often, those heuristics involve some system of establishing trust by, for example, remembering previous interactions with people or newspapers or other institutions. It just so happens that you think you come across more interesting on the internet by pretending (or actually) trusting a different set of sources than society at large, i. e. conspiracy theorists pseudonymously ranting about the "mainstream media", instead of that media.
Man, when I was an edgy teenager I questioned everything. But then I grew up, had a family and you know what.... I ain't got time to question everything. Even if I spent all my time questioning everything, what would I gain? I couldn't possibly get answers to 99% of the things I question. I can't be an expert in everything.
So whats the point in questioning everything? Who gives a shit if this was a "stealth article" by Apple, the CIA or the Coca Cola Bottling Company. What difference does it make to me? None whatsoever.
These days I try to be very careful what things I spend my time & energy on.
several garmin watches have had this feature since May (I think) of this year, requiring a paired garmin compatible phone, actively running garmin app, to work; sends text to selected contact about “incident.” Doesn’t appear to contact emergency services.
The 2015 Garmin Edge Explore 1000 bike computer has this feature. By all accounts it was/is implemented poorly and triggers erroneously all the time. If they'd made it call the emergency services they'd have got in a lot of trouble.
Apple don't deserve any credit for the idea but deserve something for doing it well.
If there's one thing Apple does well is reinventing the "wheel". Every single one of their product seems to be an improved iteration over some predecessor, I don't have any Apple devices though, I might be wrong.
Poor wording I suppose. My garmin is prior to that one, and has fall detection by using my phone via Bluetooth. Not sure who had it first, but definitely before that 2019 Verizon model.
Kinda. The part that they're referring to is it being Garmin's first device with cellular capability. But it's definitely vague around fall monitoring too.
I'm referring to this sentence, which has nothing to do with cellular capability:
> Like the latest Apple Watch, which has a built-in fall detection system, the new Garmin watch also has a safety monitoring feature, which the company calls incident detection.
- you are in a terrible accident
- there is no one around you to call an ambulance
- you can’t call an ambulance yourself, because you are knocked out or can’t move
I think the odds for such an event are rather low. If you like smart watches, sure, go ahead and buy one. But for everybody who just wants to wear it because they are afraid: I don’t think it’s necessary for most people, unless you ride around alone in remote areas and are inexperienced or whatever.
My point is: don’t buy because of fear if your risk profile is super incredibly low.