A woman involved in a horror smash – on the same day as the tragic Cardiff car crash – has shared a potentially life-saving tip for iPhone users after her handset automatically sent her mother an SOS alert following her accident.
Nicole Samuel implored Twitter users to ‘list someone as an emergency contact’ and shared a screengrab of a text her mother recieved, pinpointing her location.
Police arrived on the scene to find Miss Samuel’s car flipped onto its roof, but she had scrambled to safety.
Three days later, Miss Samuel tweeted: ‘It could be the difference between life and death. Please, please, please stop what you’re doing and add a family member [as an emergency contact on your phone]’.
Miss Samuel’s accident in Aberdare, Wales, was on Saturday, March 4 – the same day a car carrying five friends crashed less than 25 miles away in Cardiff.
Darcy Ross, 21, Eve Smith, 21, and Rafel Jeanne, 24, died after their VW Tiguan left the A48 and smashed into trees in the early hours of Saturday, March 4.
Two friends Sophie Russon, 20, and Shane Loughlin, 32, were in a critical condition when they were found inside the wreckage.
Seach parties had been scouring the area for nearly 48 hours after the five friends were last seen at a Cardiff petrol station at 2am on Saturday, March 4.
Nicole Samuel was involved in a car crash on Saturday 4 March on the main road through Llwydcoed, South Wales. Following this, she wrote some advice everyone should follow
Nicole wrote on Twitter that she enabled for her mum to be her emergency contact, telling her followers that she cannot ‘stress’ enough how important it is to activate this feature on your phone
The five crash victims were returning from a night out in Cardiff when their white VW Tiguan left the road at speed and flew into trees and undergrowth. Three have died, two are seriously injured and in hospital.
In the screenshot of the message, the automatic message can be seen. It reads: ‘Crash Detected SOS.
‘Nicole Samuel called emergency services from this approximate location after iPhone detected a crash.
‘You’re receiving this message because Nicole has listed you as an emergency contact.’
In full, Nicole wrote on Twitter that she enabled her mum to be an emergency contact, writing: ‘I cannot stress this enough!! This text was sent to my mam from my iPhone after my car accident.
‘Listing someone as a emergency contact can be the difference between life & death. Please please please stop what you doing and add a family member or share this to somebody else.’
Following this advice, other users have commented just how ‘important’ it is to share this feature.
One user tweeted: ‘Glad you’re sharing this girl! Hope you’re ok and have a speedy recovery.’
Another said: ‘Brilliant and important feature.’
A third added: ‘I did this. Saves your life. Best thing ever!!!’
One person questioned how exactly her phone knew that she was involved in a crash, writing: ‘Hope your alright!! just wondering how did your phone contact emergency services or do you have to push the button down at the side?’
And Nicole replied back: ‘No you don’t push any button it detects the crash itself and does it all for you!! It’s incredible.’
While another person echoed the significance of having this on your phone, saying: ‘As an emergency call operator, I can confirm these calls connect straight to 999 and we connect them through to the police if no one speaks to us. If you DO come on the line, we can connect you to the other emergency services you ask for too.’
And a fifth person wrote: ‘Glad you’re okay! This is such a great feature. For those asking, crash detection is on the new iPhones as a safety feature – if it thinks you’ve been in a crash and you don’t respond to your phone, it automatically calls emergency services! Didn’t know about contacts too!’
While another person said that the same feature can be activated for the Apple Watch too.
They wrote: ‘My dad actually took a hard fall while wearing his Apple Watch and it notified me and my sister so we could immediately jump into action. Luckily he was just a little bruised up but with them living almost two hours away, it really gives a sense of comfort that we were notified.’
How to enable emergency SOS on your iPhone
Nicole wrote that enabling this feature is ‘honestly is a life saver.’ Here is how you can add an emergency contact on your iPhone:
- Open the Health app and tap your profile picture
- Tap Medical ID
- Tap Edit, then scroll to Emergency Contacts
- Tap the Add button to add an emergency contact
- Tap a contact, then add their relationship
- Tap Done to save your changes
How to do this for Android
You can use the Personal Safety app to save and share your emergency info.
- On your phone, open the Safety app
- Tap Safety check
- Select your Reason and Duration
- Tap Next
- Select your contacts
- Tap Turn on
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