Not quite a “panic on the disco” — but there was panic at Bonnaroo last weekend.
A latest iPhone feature caused chaos on the primary day of the Tennessee festival on Thursday, June 15, placing multiple accidental calls to emergency services.
Police in Manchester shared details on Twitter, explaining that the calls were as a consequence of a malfunction with the iPhone’s feature, which routinely sends an alert to emergency services if it detects that the user has been involved in a crash.
“MPD has responded to multiple accidental 911 calls at Bonnaroo,” the Facebook post reads. “It’s likely that these calls are a results of ‘Crash Detection Mode,’ a latest feature on Apple iPhones.”
“Please be mindful and consider deactivating this feature in your phone until Bonnaroo concludes,” the post concluded.
In accordance with the Apple website, when your iPhone detects a severe automobile crash, it’s going to display an alert and can routinely initiate an emergency phone call after 20 seconds, unless you cancel.
In the event you are unresponsive, your iPhone will play an audio message for emergency services and offers them your latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates with an approximate search radius.
The Bonnaroo organizers also took to Twitter to spread the word, posting a tweet that read: “Let’s work as a team to resolve this!”
They then shared the easy steps to turning off “Crash Detection Mode,” through the iPhone settings.
“You may take motion by going Settings>Emergency SOS and deactivating the “crash” feature,” the team tweeted.
Luckily, there have been no crashes reported on the four-day music festival, with headliners including Foo Fighters, Paramore, Korn, Knocked Loose and AFI.
It’s not the primary time the feature has caused unintentional 911 calls. In January, there have been reports that the newly rolled-out feature was causing 911 centers near ski mountains to be overwhelmed with accidental, automated calls from fallen skiers’ and snowboarders’ phones and watches.
