Metal fans heading to Download Festival this weekend have been urged to put their wearable tech in airplane mode when heading into a mosh pit to avoid making accidental 999 calls.
Most weekends Leicestershire Police handle about 600 emergency calls, but when the three-day festival is underway at Donington Park, these calls rise by nearly 700.
This is in part because when festival goers wearing tech such as smart watches jump into a mosh pit the devices assume they “have been in a collision”, Leicestershire Police warned.
It causes a huge increase in calls, which puts call handlers under pressure and can take resources away from genuine emergencies.
The police explained that each call has to be assessed and those who do make unwanted 999 calls are told to stay on the line to conform if they are safe.
The force said: “All those calls had to be assessed, with three outbound call attempts completed to ensure there is no threat, risk or harm, taking our contact handlers away from answering true emergency calls.”
To avoid this from happening again, those attending the festival have been asked to put their smart watches on airplane mode before entering a mosh pit.
Police request people answer “callbacks from hidden numbers” to let them know you are safe and are “switching on airplane mode or disabling emergency alerts on your wearable tech”.
Download Festival, which is already underway, is expected to host about 75,000 rock fans, according to the organisers.
The gates to the festival opened on Wednesday ahead of the three-day festival for fans to see acts including headliners Green Day, Sleep Token and Korn.
The metal festival has seen several incidents in the past few years. In 2022, two men died at the festival after becoming unwell, one with a suspected cardiac arrest. Leicestershire Police said the man was taken to hospital on Saturday evening, when heavy metal band Iron Maiden were the headline act.
