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Garmin 1030+ calling the police!

I've been using my 1030+ for over a year, generally connected to the Garmin app on the phone but suddenly on a ride today, I got some very worrying behaviour.

I had some sort of alarm sounding, with the left/right edges of the screen pulsing in a faint red colour. It also said that blocked phone numbers were unblocked (don't recall exactly what it said as I was in heavy traffic).

It wasn't safe to stop, so I rode on for a couple of minutes, then stopped. By this time the alarm had gone off twice more. I got my phone out and found that it had called the police, on the non emergency number (112 - I'm in the UK). I had to apologise to the person on the other end of the call, and they took my details. When I checked, it was (as expected) the 3rd call to 112!

Thinking it might be some sort of anti theft thing, I checked through the menus and found those settings. I've never used it, so the PIN wasn't set. I set that up and made sure the alarm was off, both on the 1030 and the app on the phone. I disconnected the phone and even turned it off to be sure it couldn't call 112 again.

I set off again and, over the next few minutes, the alarm went off at least twice more. After that, it settled down and didn't trigger again.

Has anyone else seen this behaviour? Does this sound like the anti theft alarm? If so, does anyone know if it's able to automatically call the police?

I'm worried about having the phone on now when out on the bike. Wasting police time is really not something I want to do!

The only recent changes are that I've connected a Garmin rear light with radar, and the 1030 asked me to update the software on startup, which I declined (as I was just setting off on my ride).

Thanks.

0 cheracogoff over 1 year ago

Sounds like Incident Detection was activated. I have found this function does not work well and it is best to turn it off.

0 TheBigG over 1 year ago in reply to cheracogoff

I wondered about the incident detection, thanks, but I don't think it's that.

The phone number for that is set to my wife's (not 112), and I think it only sends a text, rather than making a phone call. I triggered it (legitimately) about a year ago - it texted my wife and the alarm stayed on until I manually turned it off. At the weekend, the alarm turned itself off after a short time and my wife wasn't notified.

0 cheracogoff over 1 year ago in reply to TheBigG

I think but I'm not sure that if the bike alarm goes off, it only sends a warning to your smart phone and does not call anyone. Perhaps the problem is the Requesting Assistance feature where if the power button is held down for five seconds request for assistance is sent. Maybe your power button is not functioning properly.

0 TheBigG over 1 year ago in reply to cheracogoff

That sounds plausible, thanks - I wasn't aware of that feature. I've sent a message to Garmin support, so I'll see what they say.

0 gordonwd over 1 year ago

I thought that for incident detection etc. it would only contact a number that you entered yourself, and moreover the recipient gets an email and has to accept being on the notification list.

0 TheBigG over 1 year ago in reply to gordonwd

Yes, I can't find anything that indicates the Garmin can initiate a phone call to the police.

I'm now thinking it's more likely that the phone itself may have initiated the call. There's a feature on Android where 5 presses of the power button will call the police, so perhaps that was triggered by the way the phone was sitting in the bag.

If so, I can't understand the alarms on the Garmin, though. They seemed to happen when the calls happened. OK, perhaps they were notifying me of an alert state on the phone, though I can't find anything in the manuals that say the Garmin does that. The really odd thing is that I had 2 more alarms on the Garmin after the phone was switched off!

I'm confused!

And I realised that 112 is the same as 999, so I'm even more mortified about wasting the time of the emergency services (the non emergency number is 101).