They managed to call for help using Siri

May 2, 2017 12:26 GMT  ·  By

The sole purpose of virtual assistants is to make it easier for users to perform various actions on their smartphones and retrieve information in an easy way. This is exactly what Siri did when it played a key part in the rescue of fishermen stranded at sea.

Four fishermen were stranded at sea on Saturday, when their 18-foot boat encountered violent waves off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida, according to Fox 4. The situation rapidly got alarming, as the boat quickly started to take on water. The fishermen put their life jackets on and one attempted to call 911.

However, he couldn’t use the smartphone’s touchscreen display to open up the dialer, because his fingers were cold and wet. As a result, he proceeded to summon Siri and ask the virtual assistant to call for help. A coast guard helicopter located the men and dropped in a diver until Miami-Dade Police officers arrived and rescued them.

The fisherman used an iPhone 7 to call for help

The fisherman who called for help used an iPhone 7 and the fact that the smartphone is waterproof certainly played an important part. Had it not been, water could have reached its internal components, possibly causing the device to shut down and making it very difficult for the four men to seek help.

This isn’t the first time that Siri assisted people that found themselves in an emergency situation. A 4-year old boy saved his mother’s life last month using Siri. The boy found his mother lying unconscious on the floor and used her fingerprint to unlock the phone and then call for help, after activating Apple’s voice assistant.

However, there are situations in which certain users abuse Siri’s features like in the case of the Siri 108 prank, which requires users to say “108” to Siri and place unintended calls to emergency services. When Siri hears the 108 number, it dials 911 or the emergency phone number in the country.