I turned my fall feature off.

When I'm further out and mostly isolated, I actually ride with a Garmin InReach Mini which uses satellites. I can text people through the satellite and call for Search & Rescue if needed.

 

I ride rocky trails with a lot of hard hits, small drops, etc.
The occasions when my watch detected falls, it was correct - 0 false alarms since fall detection was introduced. (Apple Watch Series 4)

 

I don’t have an Apple watch but my Garmin 530 has incident detection and it’s given me a couple false positives when I’ve safely landed jumps or drops.
So I turned it off for mountain biking, on for road biking.
The good thing about the Garmin’s incident detection feature is I can program it to call whomever I want — not just 911. I set mine up to call one of my daughters. It gives me a local alert first so I have a chance to defeat it before it makes the call.
Only mentioned in case you might be considering looking at Garmin products for a similar feature.
If you’re not doing significant drops / jumps, it might serve your needs.
=sParty

 

I don’t have an Apple watch but my Garmin 530 has incident detection and it’s given me a couple false positives when I’ve safely landed jumps or drops.
So I turned it off for mountain biking, on for road biking.
The good thing about the Garmin’s incident detection feature is I can program it to call whomever I want — not just 911. I set mine up to call one of my daughters. It gives me a local alert first so I have a chance to defeat it before it makes the call.
Only mentioned in case you might be considering looking at Garmin products for a similar feature.
If you’re not doing significant drops / jumps, it might serve your needs.
=sParty

Have you ever had a false positive incident while road riding?

I think I remember that shortly after Garmin introduced this feature, that ppl had more false alerts while road riding than while mtb riding because even though impacts on the road are much smaller, they're "sharper" because of the lack of suspension and tire cush and on the mtb, riding impacts tend to be muted by suspension and bigger tires with lower pressure.

I have to figure that putting the incident detection on your body is going to be better still at muting riding inputs. Which is the logic behind sensors like this:

Introducing ANGi | Specialized.com
Tocsen – The intelligent Crash Sensor | uvex sports (uvex-sports.com)
ICEdot | ICEdot Crash Sensor

I haven't used any of these because I ride in places where cell reception is spotty enough that there's actually little likelihood of a call going out. I have a SPOT that I use for work, and I'm probably going to get a satellite-based system for personal use, also. It's not automated like the crash sensors, so it obviously won't put a call out if I'm unable to push the SOS button, but an automated system isn't helpful if the network it relies on is inaccessible. phones with satcom capabilities will make these automated alert systems really interesting and I'll be reevaluating them when that happens.

 

I’ve been wearing an apple watch for all of my rides for a few years. it has never incorrectly detected a fall when I didn’t fall. I’ve fallen hardish a few times and it detected the fall once. I cancelled it with the “I’m okay” button.

We built a kicker ramp for use in the street in front of our house, and hitting that ramp to flat it does go off every now and then.

I value the fall detection feature.

i value long pressing the button to initiate an emergency call a bit more, as that seems to be super handy in a pinch. Never had to use it though.

I recommend the apple watch, it does a ton well.

 

I have fall detection on on my watch and it has only false detected a fall once, and that was when I was playing in the street on my trials bike. The new ultra watch has the sattelite-based emergency contact stuff too.

 

I have an Apple watch. The fall detection gave me 2 false positives, one I didn't realize had happened and it called my contact. Doh!

The events were a jump landing and a drop landing.

Just an additional item--if you have an iPhone as well and you carry it on your rides, you have to cancel the call on both the phone and the watch. Or else.

 

Not my experience. Working on my cabin well a tool move gave a false positive and the cancel from watch screen cancelled it.

Overall the fall detection works well. It was insightful to look at emergency products for my mother now in her 90s. Apple Watch with cellular always on has been much better and more reliable than other products including the price and ongoing costs.

 

Apple watch with klutz detection??

We don't call ya Grace for nothing!!

 

I never paid attention to this feature in the past. Last May, while gravel cycling with friends in early spring, I crashed going 25mph. Was a beautiful, typical Thursday evening. I hit a slick spot and slammed to the ground. I tried to unclip but didn't have enough time and fell. As I was unclipping all my weight landed in my foot/ankle and twisted it backwards. Tore 3 ligaments, torn syndesmosis, broken fibula, blood clot, etc....3 surgeries and some hardware and more hardware removal. Almost lost my foot as a result but I'm back to riding 180mi/wk now.

My Garmin 530 started alarming and my wife got a text about my "incident". Thankfully I was with friends who called EMS but it would have come in REAL helpful if I wasn't. I was in shock and landed about 2 body lengths from my bike. Far enough where getting to it and accessing my phone in a top tube bag would have been a monumental task.

 

Thanks for all of the input and responses. I didn't know Garmin had satellite based devises. That might be a better choice due to lack of reception in remote riding locations.

Do you need a data/communication plan for your Garmin devices? Above 'Battery mentioned Garmin InReach Mini, are there other Garmin devices with the same feature?

FYI, at 68 I don't do big drop offs or jumps. I was mostly curious about the false 'fall' detection.

 

Garmin offers a number of devices with InReach sat com capability. AFAIK, none do an automated crash detection on their own. Not sure if the incident detection of a newer Edge that can pair with an InReach will send through the InReach or not. InReach devices do need a service plan to use them.

 

I have an Apple watch...but don't ride with it. I used a Garmin Vivo 3 and now an Instinct 1...neither have incident detection. I have an iphone 12 Mini...and take that with me. Anyone know if the older iphones have any kind of incident detection? The "Emergency Call & SOS" is switched on.

 

Usually riding on trails frequented by others, fall detection not too important to me.

when doing remote rides in out of the way places, usually there is no cell signal, so Apple Watch would be useless.

I’m leaning towards a garmin for that reason.

 

Usually riding on trails frequented by others

Lol...that's the only thing that is reassuring to me. The trails I ride by myself are pretty popular with the local riders.

 

I'm 68, and I do a lot of riding on my own - all types of riding. I am very happy to have fall detection. I've had a couple of false positives, but it's absolutely worth it to me. If something really bad does happen... It's pretty easy to silence the alert before it calls 911.

 

I have an Apple Watch and so far the one time that it registered a fall it was correct.

I have a Garmin Edge 530 as well, but I do not trust that as I am skeptical of the overall programming. When I first had the Garmin, after a "jump" it would give me a "great air" message. The only problem was that it also gave me this notification while riding on a sidewalk. So I question its abilities.

 

"Just an additional item--if you have an iPhone as well and you carry it on your rides, you have to cancel the call on both the phone and the watch. Or else. "

I didn't realize that the notification would have to be cancelled on both the iPhone and the watch. Do you have the cellular version of the Apple watch? That could be a stopper to this purchase. I always have the iPhone with me but it's in my pack. Not sure I could get to it in time to cancel a false 'fall' notification. The convenience of the watch on the wrist is what appealed to me.

Is the double cancel only true if you have a non cellular apple watch? My understanding is that a cellular Apple watch is it's own device, independent of the iPhone.

 

You only need to cancel it on the watch.

 

On the whole subject of which device to get... I'm a self-admitted gear whore, and I have enough income to be able to indulge myself. So I buy products just to try them out, and I'll retire them if I don't like them. I currently have about 6 Garmin Edges and a Garmin Fenix, as well as the Apple stuff. I also have the Slopes app for snowboarding. I don't have an axe to grind with any particular product--I just want to use the one that works best for what I'm doing.

Unfortunately every single option is a compromise in some way. The Fenix is great in many ways, but it doesn't have an accelerometer so can't measure jumps (I use Telemetry Overlay, so that's an issue). The GoPro has GPS and an accelerometer, but it's not very dependable and has poor granularity, so I merge the Garmin data stream with the GoPro footage to arrive at a final product. That also rules out the Apple watch, which IMO doesn't have as good granularity as the Garmin anyway.

The Garmin OTOH doesn't have support for lifts which bugs me (the Slopes app effectively pauses your session during the ride up and gives you a summary of time spent on the lift). The Fenix claims to have support for this, but only for snow sports and I've never been able to fool it into giving me the function for bike park.

The Apple watch bugs my wrist when riding, which the Garmin doesn't do, but the Fenix can't answer phone calls or control the GoPro.

Aaaaaaaanyway, the point is that there is no perfect solution. You simply have to decide what's most important for you and try to accommodate that, and don't sweat the other stuff. Or you could become a walking tech gadget Christmas tree.

 

my only complaint and the reason I don’t have an Apple Watch is that you have to charge the battery every night. I wear a Garmin Fenix and the battery lasts several days at minimum while using a GPS during daily runs/rides, or a couple weeks without GPS. I see my wife’s Apple Watch and like the features though. I have a Garmin Edge bike computer and have been very happy with it. I once hit a big pothole on my gravel bike and it sounded the crash alarm, but it gives you sufficient time to cancel if it’s not a real crash and you’re conscious. I’ve never had mine talk to me about “flow” or “grit” and could care less about those artificial Garmin metrics. I also have an Inreach mini, mostly for hiking/biking in remote areas, but you have to be able to push the emergency button to get rescued. It’s handy for driving in remote areas too, you can text things like you need a tow truck etc. if you’re really out there, by yourself, you can have someone track you from your inreach to make sure you’re still moving. my iPhone also has crash notification. If I did crash it would be like sending a message to all ships at sea with all these devices.

 

Yes. I was mountain biking by myself on the Hole in the Ground trail on the Donner Summit and I took a nasty fall. I wasn’t seriously hurt but it automatically called my son and daughter with the alarm.

 

I like my Apple Ultra as it works great for riding and many other capabilities.. A nice feature is that can automatically call for help if you crash and become unconscious. It has Satellite activation in case you are in an area where normal cell service is not available. I ride alone most the time and think its a great emergency contact when riding way out in the boonies...

 

Just so everyone is clear, you need an iPhone 14 on you to have satellite communication ability. The watch itself does not have that capability.

 

I fell earlier this year while riding my road bike - a really dumb fall when I wasn’t able to unclip on time at an intersection. My Apple Watch detected the fall successfully and asked me a couple of questions. I’ve never had any false positives. The only issue is that there’s no cell phone reception in some of the areas we mountain bike. I may have read somewhere Apple was working on enabling satellite emergency calls, but can’t remember the details.

 

Mine has given false alarms. The last was when my sons dog was jumping on me and I was flinging my arm around. Sat in my hammock wrong the other day flipped fast, landed on the ground, slammed my head against the wall and nothing from the watch. Haven’t tested it falling off the bike yet.

 

Thanks for clearing that up Harold........boy when I got my Ultra they sure made it sound like the watch alone could call emergency satellites .....well I always carry my 14 Pro....but I sure thought the watch stood on it's own....another marketing ploy I misread for sure...

 

always beware what the marketing idiots say. there was probably a little asterisk or tiny little subscript/superscript to an illegible and/or rapidly displayed disclaimer about the actual requirements for that function to work.