Driver survives 330ft plunge, iPhone crash alert helps rescuers find her

Natalia Sidorska was trapped under the back seat of her car, badly injured and convinced she was going to die, when a clicking sound told her the vehicle had caught fire on Horseshoe Pass in Denbighshire. The 32-year-old had lost control during a drive in June 2025 on the steep road near Llangollen, and her car plunged about 250ft to 330ft down the hillside before coming to rest in a field below.

Sidorska suffered life-changing injuries, including a badly injured left leg, and tried to get help by shouting to Siri to contact emergency services on 112. Her phone had been dislodged in the impact, leaving it out of reach. She struggled to break a window, then tried the door handle before realizing the doors were still locked. Once she unlocked them, she crawled out and rolled down the field to get away just seconds before the car exploded.

What turned a desperate escape into a survivable rescue was the phone in the wreckage. Sidorska’s iPhone 16 Pro Max automatically triggered a crash-detection alert, and the message was sent to her then fiancé, who pinpointed her exact location and alerted emergency services. Sidorska later described the sequence as an “incredibly fortunate chain of events.”

Emergency crews reached the scene roughly 20 minutes after the crash, including police, the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust, North Wales Fire and Rescue Service and North East Wales Search and Rescue volunteers. The search and rescue team said it was contacted by North Wales Police to assist with the extraction of an injured woman whose vehicle had left the road on Horseshoe Pass, where the casualty received initial assessment and treatment from ambulance, fire and specialist medical crews.

The case underscores how quickly crash-detection systems are becoming part of the emergency response net on isolated roads, especially in places like Horseshoe Pass, where steep terrain can slow a visual search and every minute matters. It also shows the limits of that technology: Sidorska still had to find a way out of a burning wreck on her own after the impact knocked her phone away. On remote mountain roads, automatic alerts may narrow the gap between a crash and rescue, but survival still depends on a chain of fragile, human and technological steps holding together at the right moment.