Apple Watch fall detection helps hiker get help after after near-fatal fall

The Apple Watch’s fall detection feature came to the rescue for a man in Georgia, according to a new report from Fox5 Atlanta. Mike Menand was on a hike in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area earlier this year when his two dogs spotted a coyote in the distance, leading Menand to suffer a near-fatal fall.

“They got spooked and knocked me down and dragged me off the trail,” Menand said, referring to what happened when his dogs saw the coyote. This triggered his Apple Watch’s fall detection feature, which kicked in to call emergency services on his behalf.

“I couldn’t even get to the phone because my phone was in my pocket, which I was lying on,” Menand said. He suffered a broken leg in the accident and had a titanium rod put in his leg during surgery.

Menand said that he isn’t sure what would’ve happened if he wasn’t wearing an Apple Watch. “There’s no telling how long I would’ve been laying there,” he recalled. “I realized I couldn’t move, I couldn’t get up. I was in a lot of pain.”

In fact, just a month after Menand suffered his fall, a woman fell while hiking in the same park and did not survive. “When I read that, I thought that could’ve been me,” Menand said. “Because I was by myself, no one around me, no one really knew where I was.”

Fall detection works by intelligently detecting when a sudden fall occurs, automatically calling emergency services if the person doesn’t dismiss the alert within one minute of falling. If the person’s emergency contact information is filled out, that contact will be notified with a text message and a map of the watch’s location at the time of the fall.

You can learn more about how fall detection works and how to enable it on your Apple Watch in our complete guide.