How Find My app found a car crash victim — via her iPhone — 200 feet down a mountain

Recent ads for Apple’s iPhone 14 highlight that it can tell when you’ve been in an automobile crash, and even call an emergency number for you.

But a feature that iPhones have offered in some form since 2010 may have helped find someone who was in a wrecked car some 200 feet below the road.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a woman who had been missing following a family get-together on Christmas was found thanks to the Find My app, commonly called "Find My iPhone."

In the mountains north of San Bernardino, California, the woman had crashed and was in her car, which was well outside the view of drivers along Highway 18. 

Her family hadn’t heard from her by the following morning, so they turned on Find My to try and find her, and did, some 200 feet below the highway. They then called 911. 

She was tracked down by rescuers and taken to a local trauma center with serious injuries.

How do you find someone else’s phone with Find My?

There are multiple ways this could have happened, but there's a good chance the woman had a family sharing plan with at least one other person. Here’s how you turn on this feature:

• Set up Family Sharing. According to Apple Support, you go to your settings, and click on your name, then click Family Sharing, then Set Up My Family. 

• From there, follow the prompts to invite family members.

• Once Family Sharing is set up, go back to Settings, then click Family, then Location Settings, and turn on "Share your location with" with whomever you want to share it with.

Find My iPhone was a feature of the MobileMe plan beginning in June 2010, and then became a free feature as part of iOS 4.2 soon after, according to 9to5Mac. Find my iPhone, Find My Mac, and Find My Friends were all merged into one app called "Find My" in 2020.