When Car Crash Detection first launched in 2019, it was only available in the United States and only on Google’s newest smartphone at the time, which happened to be the Pixel 4 series. However, a short while later, it began to expand to more countries around the world as well as other Android and iOS devices.
Now, as reported by Mishaal Rahman and 9to5Google, the feature is expanding even further by adding five additional countries, bringing the list of supported countries up to twenty. This was spotted on a recent update to Google’s support page on using emergency services.
More countries added
As per the information found on Google’s support site, Car crash detection works by using your device’s location, motion sensors, and nearby sound to detect when a possible severe crash has occurred, when it then attempts to contact emergency services for you. This is possible on the Pixel 4a and later phones, including the Pixel Fold.
Crash Detection settings on the Google Pixel Fold
The following fives new countries were quietly added to the list of locations supported by this feature: Austria, Belgium, India, Portugal, and Switzerland. These now join the existing fifteen other countries that already had crash detection enabled, such as:
US
UK
Australia
Canada
Denmark
France
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Norway
the Netherlands
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Taiwan
One thing that was noticed by Pixel users is the lack of language support in certain areas, such as India where the most popular language is Hindi, a language not supported by the feature. For iOS users, this can also be an issue as even the Emergency SOS via satellite feature has regional restrictions outside the U.S. and Canada. However, this is hopefully something that will be added in the future as crash detection becomes more mainstream on smartphones and saves many lives across the globe.
