A young woman left unconscious in the mangled wreck of her car following a serious crash on a quiet road has revealed a little-known feature on her phone saved her life.
Tori Pellow, 20, had spent the night of July 18 in Portland, about 25km northwest of Lithgow in NSW‘s central west, and was driving home to Orange the next morning.
But disaster struck on the lonely Sunny Corner Road less than 20 minutes after she left her friend’s home about 6.30am.
‘I hit black ice and ran over multiple trees before crashing into one, hitting it so hard the entire front axle was ripped off my car,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
Tori said she doesn’t remember much from the crash except for her phone ringing.
She had set up the Emergency SOS feature which detected the crash and notified emergency services and her designated contacts.
‘At 6.49am, my emergency contacts received a text message saying I had been in a car crash, (my phone) also sent them an exact location of where I was,’ she said.
‘The Emergency SOS feature also automatically called emergency services, giving them my personal details and location.
‘There were multiple ambulances at the scene as well as police officers, fire brigade and council workers as the road had to be blocked off.’
Tori had to be cut out of her car while floating in and out of consciousness before she was rushed to hospital with a long list of significant injuries.
‘I was flown directly from the scene to Westmead Hospital in Sydney,’ she said.
‘I spent four days there receiving treatment for a concussion, fractures in my face – including my eye socket, cheekbone and jaw – and had to have surgery on my right wrist to remove both plastic and glass that was embedded inside.’
Sunny Corner Road is generally quiet, even more so early in the morning.
Tori feared she could have been left injured on the roadside for several hours if her phone had not sent out the emergency alerts.
‘I had never used the SOS feature before but after my accident it’s something I am suggesting everyone sets up on their phone,’ she said.
‘Life is so unpredictable and if I didn’t have this feature, there’s a high chance I could have ended up a lot worse than I did.
‘I am very lucky to have walked away from the crash the way I have and part of that is thanks to Emergency SOS.’
Five weeks on from the crash, Tori’s recovery is going well. Her face has mostly healed and her biggest struggle the hairdresser faces is using her wrist at work.
She thanked the first responders who rescued her and an unknown woman who spotted her wrecked car and helped keep her calm until emergency services arrived.
She said she had never heard about Emergency SOS until seeing a video explaining how it works online.
‘I had no idea about the feature on my phone until I watched a TikTok video about it,’ she said.
‘I didn’t think I’d ever need it but set it up anyway. I had to fill out a section all about my personal information and then had to choose who I wanted to be alerted when the Emergency SOS was activated.
‘My phone was able to detect the crash as it has an array of senses for my motion, speed, pressure change and sound level.
‘When this feature is activated from a crash it comes up with a countdown, giving you the option to cancel the phone call to emergency services and if you don’t it will contact them for you, letting them know what has happened.
‘As I had been concussed, this was one of the best parts of the feature.’
Emergency SOS is available on Apple and Android phones and can be set up in the Settings app.
