A warning to Apple Watch users

This happened a while back but I realised I hadn’t posted the warning so I thought I would give a warning to everyone.

June last year I got the approval from the wife for a new motorcycle. I’d sold mine a year before and with our office moving into the city, it made sense. My wife has never been that panicky about me and motorbikes, she knows I’m not an idiot, but she did give me approval for a 1200cc R Nine T Scrambler which is a sizeable bike.

Anyway, the second week with the bike and I decide to take it out for a nice ride. Sun is out like today as I bought it as part of the EOFY sale and got a bit of a discount. Unbeknown to me, my watch crown had got caught between my jacket and my gloves. Now, for those who aren’t aware of this, if you hold down your Apple watch crown for an extended period, it goes into emergency call mode. Great little feature I wasn’t aware of. Obviously, within about 5 seconds of taking the call, the emergency line realised I was happily riding my motorcycle and it was a pocket dial, the call didn’t last long.

That was not the problem. The problem is that when you do an emergency call, one of the default settings is to notify your emergency contact that you have initiated the call via SMS so my wife got a message.

Obviously, my wife’s first priority is calling me and I am not answering because I am happily in motorcycle land where I’m enjoying my ride and taking advantage of the sunshine. Not only does it notify the emergency contact but it continues to tell them and send them a map location every couple of minutes so it now looks like I am headed to the hospital but incapacitated as I happen to be riding in the direction of the Royal Alfred.

When I stop, I notice about 20 missed calls, about 20 messages and a very unhappy wife for obvious reasons.

It cost me an expensive dinner and spa bookings to smooth out.

The solution is simple, move the crown to the left side instead of the right where it is less likely to get caught. There is a setting to do it.

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I ride motorbikes and I’m struggling to understand how you got the crown of the watch caught between your jacket and your gloves.

The sleeve of my jacket goes down over the top of my watch and then the cuff of my gloves sits over the jacket. Are your sleeves too short? Is there a gap between your gloves and your jacket?

Or are you wearing your jacket over your gloves and your gloves aren’t large enough to go over your watch? That sounds uncomfortable if that’s the case.

confused

I typically use fairly lightweight style summer gloves as I have grip warmers so they aren’t long enough to go over the jacket. I have winter gloves which I only use for longer trips but I don’t like the lack of feel you get from more bulky grips which is why I always go with something more lightweight.

That means they are too short to go over the jacket and the watch typically sits under my jacket sleeve, on that particular day I think the watch probably slipped out of the sleeve a little and got caught by the gloves when I cocked my wrists back.

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Thank-you for the warning.

I don’t ride motorbikes (after working in insurance, just couldn’t do it), but I enjoyed the warning all the same. :slight_smile:

From the way your story started, I was expecting a trail of emergency vehicles to be chasing you across the countryside! At least the operator was savvy enough not to engage any emergency vehicles. Still sounds like it was an expensive exercise! :slight_smile:

I wasn’t aware of the Emergency Contact feature. I was just still using “ICE” in the name of my wife’s contact card (In Case of Emergency). This features sounds much better!

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As I was reading through my thought was to change the side in which the buttons are, but you finished off with that point. It’s an adjustment but a feature well worth having

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I also accidentally dialled 000 from my phone. I’ve now turned the feature off, as it’s simply too easy to do. If there’s ever an emergency I’ll have to manage the old fashioned way, but 000 get enough crank/pocket dials without my contributing to it.

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What is the shortcut on your phone?

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One of my children has triggered the watch SOS function on me. I heard the little klaxon sound and managed to stop it from dialling 000, but it did start sending the location alerts, which didn’t have an obvious way to stop at the time.

Ironically, I was at an event with at least 100 Police officers present at the time.

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The phone one is pressing the power button several times from memory and I think if you hold down it to power off it has the option to select if as well. I’ve set off the Apple Watch one a few times by getting the crown caught in normal things.