Sayre, OK – Beckham County deputies are responding to a growing number of crash alerts triggered by smartphones, and in many cases, the emergencies turn out to be something far less serious.
According to Beckham County Sheriff Derek Manning, the alerts are typically generated by newer smartphones equipped with motion detection technology designed to notify emergency services after a significant impact.
“We receive calls on iPhone alerts quite often,” Manning said. “If you have a crash and you have a certain model of iPhone or newer, the phone alerts wherever they go to, and they alert the local dispatch that there’s been a crash alert.”
While the technology is intended to quickly connect injured drivers with help, Manning said the majority of alerts deputies respond to do not involve actual crashes.
“I would say 90 to 95 percent of the ones we receive, somebody has driven off and left their phone on the car,” he said.
In those cases, deputies are dispatched to investigate what appears to be a crash scene, only to find a phone lying in the roadway. Manning said he has personally encountered multiple instances where phones had fallen from vehicles.
“I’ve found personally two phones myself in the road,” he said. “After I found the phone, I’m still standing there trying to figure out who it belongs to, and the person drives back up asking if we found a phone in that area.”
Dispatchers often attempt to call the phone associated with the alert to assess the situation. Sometimes, that adds to the confusion.
“In this case, they said they could hear moaning in the background,” Manning said. “They didn’t get a response, but they could hear moaning. A lot of times you just don’t get any response because it’s a phone laying in the roadway.”
Despite the frequent false alarms, the alert system has proven useful in real emergencies. Manning pointed to a recent incident involving a semi-truck rollover.
“In this case, it was a semi that had overturned and the driver was slightly injured,” he said. “I think he was ultimately okay. So we responded to that crash and assisted with it.”
In addition to that incident, deputies handled several other injury accidents across the county recently.
“We had two or three other injury accidents in the county that my deputies responded to,” Manning said. “Quite often we’re first responders just because we’re close and we’ve got several deputies roaming around at all times.”
Manning emphasized that while the technology can lead to unnecessary dispatches, it also plays an important role in ensuring quick emergency response when serious crashes do occur.
“Our deputies are alert and respond as quickly as they can,” he said.
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