Gravity as frame of reference in accelerometer data in iOS

I'm working on an iPhone app for motorcyclist that will detect a crash after it has occurred. Currently we're in the data acquisition process and plotting graphs and looking at data. What i need to log is the forward user acceleration and tilt angle of the bike relative to bike standing upright on the road. I can get the user acceleration vector, i.e. the forward direction the rider is heading by sqrt of the x,y and z accelerometer values squared. But for the tilt angle i need a reference that is constant, so i thought lets use the gravity vector. Now, i realize that deviceMotion API has gravity and user acceleration values, where do these values come from and what do they mean? If i take the sqrt of the x,y and z squared components of the gravity will that always give me my up direct? How can i use that to find the tilt angle of the bike relative to an upright bike on the road? Thanks.

Solution

Assuming that it's not a "joke question" you will need a reference point to compare with i.e. the position taken when the user clicks "starting". Then you can use cos(currentGravity.z / |referenceGravity|) with |referenceGravity| == 1 because Core Motion measures accelerations in g.

But to be honest there are a couple of problems for instance:

The device has to be in a fixed position when taking the reference frame, if you put it in a pocket and it's just moving a little bit inside, your measurement is rubbish
Hmm, the driver is dead but device is alive? Chances are good that the iPhone won't survive as well
If an app goes to the background Core Motion falls asleep and stops delivering values
It has to be an inhouse app because forget about getting approval for the app store

Or did we misunderstand you and it's just a game?