A Florida woman has been arrested for a hit-and-run accident in Port St Lucie, after her car called the police to report the collision.
According to police, who say the 57-year-old driver hit a truck and a van before driving off, her car’s emergency assistance feature automatically called 911, reporting the accident and location.
Local news reports say at least one victim of the accident, as well as the driver, ended up in hospital.
An increasing number of cars have features which let them contact police in case of a collision, detected by monitoring internal systems such as airbags. Ford’s system, for instance, uses a connected mobile phone to call emergency services and “supply vital information, such as your GPS coordinates, in the event you do not know your location or you are not able to provide it yourself”.
The systems aren’t designed to report on their owners in case they flee the scene of a crime, but it turns out they have that effect too - particularly if the owner isn’t aware that they turned it on in the first place.
ZDNet reports that emergency services made an immediate follow-up call to the driver, who denied knowledge of the incident.
