iPhone saves driver who crashed off 400-ft cliff

One Los Angeles man has his cell phone to thank for saving his life after his car plummetted nearly 400 feet off a cliff.

Transcript

00:00 This is video of the late night rescue,

00:03 hundreds of feet off the side of the Angeles Crest Highway

00:07 in a spot so far down,

00:09 Montrose search and rescue team members say

00:12 they might have flown over it 10 times without seeing anything.

00:15 He was 400 feet down in a canyon with virtually no way out,

00:19 and so who knows when or if we would have located him.

00:24 Except this victim has an iPhone.

00:27 For years iPhones have been able to detect when you've been in a crash

00:30 and call 911, and since his is an iPhone 14 like this one,

00:35 with the latest satellite SOS technology, it went one step further.

00:40 However, in this location there is no cell service available,

00:44 so it then reverts to satellite communication.

00:47 It sends a text message via satellite to the Apple Communication Center.

00:52 The victim's phone sent his location to Apple,

00:55 which then called the closest law enforcement agency,

00:58 in this case, Crescenta Valley Sheriff's Station,

01:01 with his satellite coordinates.

01:03 The location that we got from the iPhone activation was spot on.

01:07 That led rescuers right to him.

01:09 It was basically his phone on its own, you know, calling for help on his behalf.

01:14 Without it, they say it might have been days before they even knew he drove over the side,

01:19 more days before they found him if they could at all.

01:22 Mike Liam was lowered some 400 feet over the side to reach the victim,

01:27 who he says was bleeding from the head, his car totaled.

01:30 I believe that if we didn't have that good location information in a timely manner,

01:35 he probably would have bled out.

01:37 I kept telling him how lucky he was.

01:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]