Most people open SafeGuard, see a row of mode names like: Accident Guard, Date Guard, SafeGuard, Reverse Guard…
and what pops into their head is roughly:
- “Accident Guard is just for car crashes, right?”
- “Date Guard is only for when I’m going on a date.”
But in reality, the Guard system is something you can match to different situations.
The 5 Guard modes in SafeGuard can handle far more than the “one scenario” you probably have in mind.
Below, we’ll walk through a few very common situations from real life –
all of them based on things that really have shown up in the news –
to show how the same Guard system can be “played” in different ways to give you more protection.
1. Accident Guard:
Not just car crashes – it’s your “all outdoor emergencies” guard
A lot of people think Accident Guard is only for when you’re “driving”:
highway trips, road trips, long-distance driving – that’s when they think they need to turn it on.
But what it actually covers is any situation where you’re outside, active, and suddenly collapse or can’t move.
Picture a few scenes:
- You go alone to the riverside for a run or to a park for a walk, and suddenly feel unwell and pass out.
- You go for a little hike, slip, and tumble down a slope, ending up stuck in the bushes, unable to move.
These are situations you see in the news all the time:
someone is found collapsed in a corner, or in the mountains they aren’t discovered for hours or even days.
🔎 Real case: collapsed on a night run, only found three hours later
In Australia, a 26-year-old young father went to another town with his family for the holidays.
Around 10 p.m. that night, wearing the new smartwatch his wife had given him, he went out alone for a night run – just planning to loop around the nearby streets and test the watch.
On the way, he suddenly collapsed on the side of the road.
No one saw it happen, and nobody knew exactly which corner he fell at.
After midnight, his wife woke up and realized he still wasn’t back.
Over three hours had already passed. She and the family got in the car to drive around and look for him.
They finally found him lying on the dark roadside, with obvious signs of no life left.
By the time he reached the hospital, they could only pronounce him dead.
If, when you go out, you turn on Accident Guard,
the “stillness score” inside it starts working immediately:
- If you suddenly lose consciousness while exercising or walking outside,
- and while Accident Guard is active you remain unmoving for a long time,
- and there’s no sign you’re using your phone or doing anything normal,
the system will start accumulating “stillness status”, and once it reaches a threshold,
it will trigger an emergency SOS.
So what Accident Guard truly protects is not just that one moment of “impact in a car crash.”
It covers the entire span of time when you’re out:
the stretch where you go from “moving around”
to “completely unresponsive”.
2. Date Guard:
Not just dates – perfect for in-person trades, taxi rides, and going home drunk
Date Guard is one of those modes that’s easy to underestimate because of its name,
but in fact it’s extremely useful.
It’s designed for the risk of “meeting someone you don’t really know yet.”
First dates, going out with someone you just met to eat or see a movie – that’s only one part of it.
In the past few years, you’ve probably seen tons of news reports where the main character wasn’t on a date at all, but:
- going to meet someone from the internet for an in-person trade of a high-value item, or lured out to a meet-up, then robbed or attacked;
- getting drunk and taking a taxi home, only to wake up not in front of their own door, but in a completely unknown, isolated place – sometimes assaulted.
🔎 Real case: an in-person trade that turned into kidnapping and murder
In 2024, Pattaya in Thailand saw the notorious “cement drum corpse” case.
A 34-year-old Korean man traveled there and later went missing.
Police eventually pulled a black plastic drum filled with concrete from a reservoir; inside was his body.
Investigation showed he had been drugged by fellow countrymen, put into a car, kidnapped for ransom, and killed.
A similar pattern happened in Olathe, Kansas in the U.S.:
a man arranged to meet in a parking lot near a park for a trade.
The “buyer” turned out to be four armed men, who dragged him out of his car, beat him, and robbed him at gunpoint.
Afterwards, police publicly urged people “not to meet in-person in remote places.”
In these situations, the person already knew before leaving home:
“I’m going to meet a stranger.” The risk was never zero.
🔎 Real case: drunk in a hired car, driven to a remote place and assaulted
Singapore saw a very typical case:
a 31-year-old woman got drunk at night and called a car to go home. She fell asleep in the car.
The driver didn’t take her back to her house, but drove to a remote area and sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious, even recording the act and sending it to his friends to show off.
He was later sentenced to prison and caning.
In Kentucky in the U.S., an Uber driver took a passed-out female passenger to a hidden spot screened by bushes and raped her while she was unconscious.
Police had to reconstruct what happened afterward using GPS traces and CCTV footage.
All of these situations can be handled by Date Guard, by “writing a timeline in advance.”
In other words, before you leave, you tell the system:
“For this trip, I’m supposed to be home by [time],
or I’ll manually turn off Guard by then.”
Whether it’s a date, an in-person trade, a flat viewing, or taking a taxi while drunk—
as long as you’re willing to hit that one extra button before you go out,
Date Guard can speak up for you when you can’t say anything or can’t reach the SOS button.
3. SafeGuard :
The “baseline” that quietly runs in the background long-term
If the previous modes are “situation-specific weapons,”
then this core SafeGuard mode is the heart of the whole system.
This is the most broadly applicable Guard.
When this mode is running long-term in the background,
even if you forget to turn on the other Guards,
it can still raise an alarm if you go far beyond your preset time without using your phone at all.
“If you haven’t touched your phone for too long,
it calls you – and you don’t respond.”
No matter where it happens:
- collapsing at home, hitting your head and unable to get up;
- encountering an accident outside and lying in a place where nobody sees you;
- being restrained or controlled by someone and your phone is thrown aside, completely out of reach;
As long as you go past the time window you set without any phone usage,
this core mode will treat it as “something’s not right” and trigger an alarm.
🔎 Real case: right in front of a station, and no one noticed for days
In New South Wales, Australia, there was a particularly painful news story:
a 48-year-old woman drove to the parking lot in front of Lake Illawarra police station and stayed in her car overnight.
For the next three days, her car remained in the same parking space at the station’s front entrance,
until police finally checked and found she had died inside.
Reviewing the CCTV, they saw that on the first night she went into the station and then returned to the car.
For the following three days, no one paid attention to what was happening in that car.
This is a classic case of “something has clearly gone wrong with a person, but nobody discovers it in time.”
It’s not that there were no people around;
it’s that there was no “system” watching that stretch of blank time.
The entire point of this SafeGuard core mode is:
when you’re completely unable to send a signal yourself,
it uses “you haven’t touched your phone for far too long”
as a clue that something might be very wrong.
4. Reverse Guard:
A cry for help that says, “I shouldn’t be here”
Reverse Guard is a mode intended for long-term use.
It focuses on whether “where you are right now” makes sense.
- First, you draw your “living area” as safe zones on the map
(home, workplace, school, dorm, etc.) - Then you mark certain places as forbidden points where you absolutely do not want to be
or be left for a long time
(for example: certain hotels near your home, an abusive person’s residence, a port, isolated parking lots).
You might think that’s all it does, but that’s just the basics.
You can adapt it depending on your plans when you go out.
For example, if you’re going hiking, you can temporarily set your planned trail as your safe area.
Then, if you stray off that route, the system can detect that you’re heading somewhere you shouldn’t.
🔎 Looking at the “Okazaki Asahi” case through this lens
In the Kawasaki “Okazaki Asahi” case, there was a very cruel reality:
- She herself knew very clearly that “her ex-boyfriend’s home” was a dangerous place for her.
- Her family and the police were not completely unaware of where she might be.
- The real issue wasn’t that “her location was unknown,” but that there was no hard evidence.
Everyone pretty much knew she was probably there,
but they had no way to just break down the door and go in.
What’s truly terrifying isn’t just what happened in the end.
It’s that:
there was no system that could, in the very first moments,
tell others: “I’m being held here.”
5. One night out, protected by “four layers of Guard”
So far we’ve been looking at each mode on its own.
But the real power shows when multiple modes run at the same time.
Imagine this kind of night: you’re going to a bar to relax.
You expect the trip to take about six hours in total.
- Before leaving home, you turn on Date Guard.
- When you get in a taxi to go home, you turn on Accident Guard.
- Plus, you have your core SafeGuard mode and Reverse Guard running in the background.
That means you effectively have four layers of Guard working at once.
Here’s what that looks like when you unfold it:
1. Reverse Guard:
First, it checks whether you’re being taken somewhere you shouldn’t be
If the driver isn’t heading toward your home or a friend’s place –
places you’ve set as safe zones –
but instead is going toward a hotel, industrial area, or remote road you’ve marked as forbidden,
Reverse Guard will be the first to detect that “this path is wrong”
and trigger an alert.
2. Accident Guard:
When the stillness score fills up, it sends another SOS
Once you get into the car, you turn on Accident Guard.
From that moment, the stillness monitor is working quietly in the background.
If the car stops somewhere and you don’t move for a long time,
and your phone shows no signs of normal use,
that stillness state will slowly accumulate.
Once it hits the threshold, Accident Guard will trigger an emergency SOS.
This doesn’t have to be a “crash.” It could be that:
a trip that should have ended normally
turns into a strange stop where both the car and the person
are completely still, with no response.
3. Date Guard:
Time’s up and you still haven’t switched it off
At the start, you told the system:
“this outing should take at most six hours.”
When that time comes, if:
- you haven’t manually turned off Date Guard; and
- your phone’s location still hasn’t returned to a safe place you defined,
then according to your settings,
Date Guard will trigger an SOS at the end of the guard period,
effectively saying:
“This person did not return to a safe place according to the original plan.”
4. SafeGuard :
The last layer – if you haven’t touched your phone for too long, it will also call for help
No matter which of the earlier layers fires first,
if you go a long time without using your phone at all,
and exceed the time you set in this core SafeGuard mode,
it will also trigger an alert.
In the end:
Guard systems aren’t just “nice names” – you actually have to know how to use them
To sum up, you can remember them this way:
- Accident Guard
Your “outdoor emergency” guard – not only for car crashes.
It covers collapsing while exercising, falling during a walk, slipping on a mountain trail.
While it’s on, if you don’t move for a long time and there’s no phone activity,
it accumulates stillness and once full, it sends an SOS. - Date Guard
Any high-risk situation where you “agree on a time and place” with someone fits:
dates, in-person trades, property viewings, riding home drunk in a taxi.
You set the time by which things should have safely ended.
If by then you haven’t turned it off and you’re not back in a safe zone,
it will call for help on your behalf. - SafeGuard (core mode)
The core guard that runs long-term in the background.
Even if you forget every other mode,
as long as you go beyond the time you set without touching your phone,
it will be the first to raise the alarm. - Reverse Guard
When you’re not heading home but appear at a forbidden point
or leave your safe area for too long,
this is the first layer that says: “You shouldn’t be here.”
A Guard app is not something where “downloading it = you’re safe.”
The real question is:
Have you actually mapped the Guard system
onto the real situations in your own life?
Because when something really happens,
you might not be able to say a single word.
But the Guard system can call for help for you.
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