Similar to sharing your ETA in Apple Maps, Check In will notify the recipients if you get lost, kidnapped or simply have a car breakdown. If you deviate or stop making progress on a trip, you have fifteen minutes to respond to a notification to confirm you’re all right.
Of course it wouldn’t actually know if you got lost, kidnapped, or had a breakdown, and it’s not capable of notifying anyone of those things.
I had someone coming to visit me a couple days ago. I asked them to use check in with my house as the destination so I could see how it worked. It gave me an expected arrival time of 5:50. Right before they got to my street, it extended the arrival time to 6:10. I did not receive a notification for this. I only know because I kept checking it. They arrived at 5:52. Had they been kidnapped, I assume the kidnapper would have had an 18 minute head start. This was my one and only experience with the feature.
Of course it wouldn’t actually know if you got lost, kidnapped, or had a breakdown, and it’s not capable of notifying anyone of those things.
I had someone coming to visit me a couple days ago. I asked them to use check in with my house as the destination so I could see how it worked. It gave me an expected arrival time of 5:50. Right before they got to my street, it extended the arrival time to 6:10. I did not receive a notification for this. I only know because I kept checking it. They arrived at 5:52. Had they been kidnapped, I assume the kidnapper would have had an 18 minute head start. This was my one and only experience with the feature.