I talked my mom into upgrading to the Apple Watch Series 4 specifically for the fall detection feature. On her 2nd day of owning it, she already had a false trigger and is ready to turn the feature off.
The "fall" was actually just her taking the watch off, and setting it down on a counter.
Shouldn't the watch be able to detect if it is even being worn when monitoring for falls???
Apple Watch Series 4, watchOS 5
I don't think you're having a hardware problem at all. I think Apple's "fall detection" just isn't close to being ready for prime time. I'm totally disgusted with the feature.
I've got a friend with Parkinsons. His hands shake. He regularly gets a false fall detection just from hand shake, but since he has the watch has actually fallen hard four times and when he fell the watch didn't detect any of them.
My Apple Watch has given me several dozen false alarms. Any time I clap my hands together hard over my head at a concert it goes off. About 10-20% of the time when I'm in the kitchen chopping through poultry, smashing garlic, or shaking a half gallon of OJ hard it gives me a false alarm. This is totally reproducable. But the two times I've fallen hard, both from tripping over something on the floor in the middle of the night, it doesn't detect a fall.
Apple won't admit it, but they need to acknowledge they must work on fall detection and get it to actually work. The false alarms are annoying, but the falls, including the one I had last night which resulted in my head hitting the bed frame hard that weren't detected means this feature is an abject failure.
That's strictly your opinion. Clearly many disagree with your opinion. It's a royal pain in the neck when you're preparing a meal, and your hands are wet and oniony or garlicky. You too often have to stop, clean up, dry off and then answer the watch, then restart your work. The watch should be learning that particular repetitive motions aren't falls, but so far it's not learning.
I disagree. A false alarm is a problem. I’ve had my watch since Christmas and have had three false alarms. The third was yesterday after I clapped my hands then set my hands in my lap. At that point I called apple care to tell them. I did raise the volume and haptics hoping if I had background noise when it happened again I could stop it from calling the ambulance. I was told to call back if it continued and they would see what could be done. The fall detection is the only reason I chose the series 4 watch. Would you not consider it a problem if your home security had a false alarm when you were quietly sleeping away and the siren went off and police came to your house? It’s the same principal. People invest in these things so they have peace of mind and help quickly in a bad situation.
Earlier this month I did. I laid down in the afternoon and rolled over and it went off when I touched the pillow. At night my watch is on a charger. My security system had two false alarms while it was armed night also. Engineers fixed that problem by sending a firmware update and replacing a window sensor that said it was opened when it was closed and locked.
I was able to stop the 911 call from my phone. For my security system it was a little more difficult. The touchscreen that controls everything froze so I had to run downstairs to the keypad at an exterior door and stop it from there. Then I had call for technical support to have them figure out what was wrong with the system. My security system is good for now but I just found out my neighbor who has the exact system has been having problems for over two months. Hopefully the engineers have solved that problem. Sometimes stuff just doesn’t work under real life circumstances and trying to produce it again can be difficult. Something to mention is that the apple tech did tell me active people can have false alarms.
I got on this thread quite a while ago after researching my first false positive when I closed the car door with my hand on the door.
I also considered fall detection a significant factor for the purchase, thinking it might pay off when the weather permits bicycle riding. The series 4 ECG thing was just a kicker.
So, until last week that one detection was the only false positive. Then, while shoveling some snow, I pushed the shovel under some hard frozen ice in the street and my wrist was buzzing. Canceling the fall detection was hindered by gloves and jackets.
I'd like Apple to publicize something about the algorithm used to distinguish motion from a fall. It seems like the depth and frequency of the signal both seem important. I can see how distinguishing fall signal from noise and motion is non-trivial.
In spite of my two false alarms, I'm keeping it enabled.
And, all this discussion has me wondering... what other worn devices that do fall have detection are there and what is their false positive rate? Anybody have anything? A quick Google search found mostly button operated devices and figuring which actually detect and alert without intervention was going to take time.
Anyway, it has been valuable to hear from people who have more serious issues and how Apple responded.
The problem in establishing a false positive rate is that many false positives are entirely reasonable, like the poster that's chopping garlic. I would be upset if such action did NOT trigger a fall detection.
The problem in establishing a false positive rate is that many false positives are entirely reasonable, like the poster that's chopping garlic. I would be upset if such action did NOT trigger a fall detection.
Well it happened to me recently at the Phoenix AZ airport. I missed the last step down to the visitor parking lot. I took a big fall that resulted in me winding up flat face down on the concrete. I skinned my knee badly and ripped a hole in my pant leg. My right elbow suffered a good scrape too. Fortunately I didn’t break anything and only my pride and pant leg suffered ignominy.
My series 4 Watch... did NOTHING, no response. I checked to make sure the feature was on and it was.
I have had several false alarms, each where I took a sudden hard impact to my wrist ... but not a fall, and one real fall during a step workout, which my watch detected. However today I followed a routine I’ve had ever since I got the watch, taking it off and putting it on a table while I took a shower, and my husband says it actually rang 911. He had no idea what was going on, but when he heard the voice asking what was the emergency, he was able to let them know there wasn’t any. This is of concern to me, since there is no reason on earth why the fall detection should be triggered when I’m not even wearing the watch.
That kind of arm movement along with the clapping of hands over the head are two arm movements that are the most likely from what I can tell in generating a false alarm about falling. The watch continues to not detect real falls. I'm going into the genius bar this week.
False fall detection happened to me too. 7 times and after lots of talking to Apple, finally got them to send a new watch. It’s now happened 3 times again with the new watch. It has to be a software problem
I had the same problem. Last night fall detection went off and I was unaware. The police paid me a visit. Today it went off again while I was driving my car. I shut off fall detection but the watch kept sending out messages. I shut the phone down.
It happened to me today. All I did was get up from my chair and walk a few steps to the kitchen.
Read this, it might explain why your watch displays a false Fall Detection...https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944
Chopping butternut squash up triggered it too!
This has happened to me twice. I was just carrying my small toy poodle into the yard.
I called Apple the first time. They had never heard of a call detection problem.
Fall detection false trigger
