What began as a simple commute home from work turned into a terrifying ordeal for Angeline Bell. The West End actress had just finished her evening's performance in the cast of Matilda the Musical when disaster struck and she was left lying unconscious on the road after being thrown off her electric bike.

It was the early hours of the morning, pitch black, freezing cold and the streets were empty meaning nobody was around to get her the help she so urgently needed.

Despite everything going against her, family members and the emergency services were soon well aware of her perilous situation thanks to the Apple Watch she had strapped to her wrist.

All of Apple's latest wearables now come packed with clever technology - such as Fall Detection (Watch Series 4 or later) and Crash Detection (Watch Series 8 or later) - that calls for assistance if owners get in trouble and Angeline is convinced it saved her life that night.

"I tell everyone, my Apple Watch saved my life because I really feel like that is what happened," Angeline told Express.co.uk.

"I think my winter jacket got caught in my bicycle wheel and I came off the bike and face-planted. I was wearing a helmet, but it still caused a brain haemorrhage, I had fractured my face in several places and I knocked out my three front teeth."

Thanks to its in-built accelerometers and clever algorithms, the Apple Watch instantly recognised that a heavy fall had taken place and, with Angeline not responding to the alerts asking if she was OK, it began calling the emergency services and messaging close contacts.

"I was unconscious but the ambulance found me and my three teeth, it's just a miracle," Angeline explained.

"My son and my boyfriend both received an SOS message of my location that said that I'd had a hard fall.

"I would have probably been there all night until somebody came out to go to work or maybe a car might not have seen me. Who knows what could have happened if the watch hadn't done that - it just blows my mind."

Incredibly, despite Angeline's horrific injuries the Apple Watch survived unscathed with the actress still wearing the same model that helped her that evening. "I've still got the same one and I still wear it everywhere. On the odd occasion that I forget it, I do freak out a little bit now."

Thanks to getting help fast along with plenty of support from the theatre community - who raised thousands to pay for dental reconstruction - Angeline is now fully on the road to recovery but she rarely goes out now without her watch. "I am definitely attached to it, I will say that!"

This isn't the first time the Apple Watch has helped save someone's life and it's something the US technology giant is incredibly proud of.

"You can't imagine your product doing a more important thing than saving somebody's life," Greg Joswiak, Apple's Senior Vice President Worldwide Marketing, told us.

"And that's why we continue to invest in this area, more and more. It is Crash Detection, the Fall Detection. We have the satellite capability now that if you're off the grid and you've lost touch or been in an accident there's a way to call for help.

"All these features add up to a lot of lives that get saved. What more meaningful feature could you ever have in a product that people are taking with them everywhere they go, like an Apple Watch or an iPhone, it is incredibly satisfying and it only makes us want to do more."

Features such as Crash and Fall Detection along with constant heart monitoring have been made possible by the advancements in technology with hardware and software working together to bring these life-saving updates to millions of wrists around the world. Apple also says a vast amount of testing has been done to make sure SOS alerts only kick in when an accident has happened and not when a user simply slams their hand on the desk.

"There's a lot of science that goes into the algorithms and a lot of testing that goes into the algorithms of the Apple Watch for Fall Detection and Crash Detection," Joswiak explained.

“We need to be accurate because we can't be the boy that cried wolf.

"So it's incredibly important that it's accurate, as are the other health features such as the ability for the Apple Watch to understand if you are going through Atrial fibrillation with your heart.

"And one of the things that's really amazing is that people have shared stories with us that they've had to watch, give them that kind of warning.

"The thing that they didn't know was going on with their heart, ends up being something that they get attention for and ultimately as a likelihood of having saved their life.

“That kind of credibility with our features is incredibly important - the amount of time and effort and science that goes into this is staggering."

Since the original Apple Watch launched all the way back in 2015 it’s continued to improve, get more advanced and offer more and more health features.

The latest Series 10 models now offer sleep apnoea alerts, nightly temperature monitoring for improved Cycle Tracking along with those all-important AFib warnings and Fall alarms.

It’s something Apple now sees as a vital part of its products.

“We've got people who want to work on this who are just brilliant in our engineering teams," Joswiak proudly told us.

"How rewarding it is for them to work on features like this where they know that the output of their work is going to save lives. It's an incredibly important area for us.”