Accidental 9-1-1 calls rise due to kids, smartwatches

4.10.25 – Wes Tomlinson, The Decatur Daily

Officials in Alabama’s Morgan and Limestone counties report that a child playing with a parent’s smartphone is the most common cause of an accidental call to 911. Apple Watches’ fall detection feature is another culprit.

Emergency call centers in Morgan and Limestone counties in Alabama are experiencing a surge in accidental 9-1-1 calls, primarily due to children playing with smartphones and the fall detection feature on Apple Watches. Morgan 9-1-1 Operations Manager Joey Sivley notes that children often trigger emergency calls by repeatedly pressing the power button on phones, while the fall detection on smartwatches automatically dials 9-1-1. Limestone County 9-1-1 Director Brandon Wallace says accidental calls account for about 24% of all 9-1-1 calls.

(TNS) — The Morgan County 911 center received 19 accidental calls on Tuesday and Limestone County 911 averaged 23 accidental calls per day in March, officials said.

Morgan 911 Operations Manager Joey Sivley said the most frequent cause of accidental calls, or abandoned calls, are children activating the safety feature on their parents’ cellphones.

“Parents give the kids the phone, and the kids play with it, hitting the power button four or five times, which calls 911 before they hang up,” Sivley said.

He said they have also received multiple calls from Apple Watches because of their fall detection feature, which automatically dials 911 when it detects a fall, even if the wearer doesn’t manually call for help.

Morgan 911 uses a call handling system that sends a text to anyone who hangs up before speaking with a dispatcher. The text asks whether they meant to call 911. If there’s no emergency, recipients are instructed to reply with the letter “N.”

“If they don’t return the text, then we have to call back to make sure everything is OK,” Sivley said. “What sending the text out does is it frees up that call-taker having to call back a number and basically speeds up the process.”

Sivley explained the abandoned call feature is triggered when a 911 call is made but disconnected before it reaches the emergency dispatcher’s phone system.

Although this feature is in place, Sivley said he encourages the public to remain on the line if they accidentally dial 911, rather than hanging up.

Limestone County 911 Director Brandon Wallace said they also receive frequent accidental calls.

“Over the last year, our hangups, open lines, and misdials are right at 24% of our 911 calls,” Wallace said. “Those are some rough numbers, but we had 691 (accidental calls) in March.”

He said he believes accidental calls began increasing after Apple Watches started to become popular, but said they can distinguish the call and determine if it came from an Apple Watch or not.

Wallace said he has witnessed instances where an unlocked device has accidentally dialed 911 when left in someone’s pocket.

“I remember about 10 years ago, we had a guy laying block and building a house,” Wallace said. “His phone accidentally dialed 911 about 40 times, and somebody finally got out there and the guy had his phone in his back pocket and had no clue what was going on.”

Wallace said Limestone 911 differs from Morgan 911 in that their open lines are transferred to law enforcement for follow-up. He said Limestone 911 does not handle the follow-up, as it is considered a law enforcement issue, unlike Morgan County, where law enforcement is dispatched by 911.

“We dispatch for fire departments only,” Wallace said.

Wallace said their system was upgraded a few years ago to support smartphone and smartwatch crash detection features, which automatically alert 911 of a potential wreck and broadcast the location — even if the caller is unresponsive.

He called the technology a game changer for crash victims in remote areas.

“If you’re driving an ’84 Chevrolet and run off the road at 2 a.m. and hit a tree in the middle of nowhere, I mean, nobody knows it,” Wallace said. “Over the last few years, since crash notifications on phones have been a thing, we’ve received a few of those and sent responders out. They’ve found a deceased person or someone in critical condition.”