Emergency Contact Infoormation and Incident Detection

Recently I joined a cycling group and they require us to provide In Case of Emergency Information so that if we have an accident our phone provides people with names and numbers to call. At first I thought “Why would I want this, I have no In Case of Emergency person” due to being single and living alone.

Now I believe that this is a useful idea. Nothing bad has happened that affected my point of view. It’s that it’s easy on iOS and Android devices to add three or four people to contact in case of emergency. It’s not that you have to give up this information.

The concept is that if you’re rendered unconscious or incoherent after an accident, or incident, people can look at your phone and find emergency contact information and contact the right people. You can say whether they are siblings, parents, colleagues and more, which can be useful.

As a follow up to this step I have added emergency contacts to be notified automatically by Garmin in case of an emergency. I also added myself, so that if a false alarm is triggered I can confirm that it was a false alarm.

Incident detection is especially good when doing something alone. That’s when we want people to know where we had our incident. It is not unusual to hear about people on solo activities going missing. At least with certain devices that detect incidents people are aware and can send help.

The two devices that have this are the Apple Watch and the Garmin Instinct 2 so I need to wear at least one of these devices for an alert to be sent automatically.