A hiker in Colorado who endured a scary, blind fall from a cliff tells Outside Online he isn't sure whether his smartwatch saved his life, but he was pretty happy its fall-detection software was in working order. In October, photographer Phong Le was traversing a ridge between Mount Helen and Father Dyer Peak when the boulder he was leaning on gave way, sending him somersaulting down a rocky slope. Worse: His knit hat came down over his eyes during the fall, and he couldn't see anything. "My first thought was that's it, I'm dead," Le tells Outside. "After my third impact, I thought maybe I'm not going to die, but I'm going to be really messed up."
When he finally came to a stop, Le says he heard his Apple Watch beeping and saw it was counting down to call 911, and he tapped the button to place the call immediately. He spoke with a dispatcher via his watch and then his phone, which also survived the fall, and was eventually brought to safety after hiking further down the mountain to meet rescuers. He suffered lacerations to his legs and forearms, bruising to his back, and two sprained wrists, but no broken bones. Le was wearing the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the latest model from the tech giant, but the story isn't exactly an ad for such features.
"We see a lot of good coming from this technology, but there is a downside," says Deputy David Gomez of Idaho's Boise County Sheriff's Office. "You can be skiing and hit your hand on a tree branch, but the device thinks it was a car accident." In peak season, his dispatchers might field 20 calls daily, most of which are false alarms. Many don't even realize their phones even have the tech, and thus don't realize it's been triggered. Still, rescue stories continue to surface, with another from October: Apple Insider notes that a scuba diver who got into trouble when ascending too quickly got help because his smartwatch alerted an instructor.
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