Why has the emergency contacts functionality been removed? According to some users at What is an &quot;Emergency Call,&quot; and can I  set number for it? there used to be a feature to add emergency contacts that can be dialed without passing the lock screen.

Does anyone have knowledge of why this was done?
This may differ depending on what brand and model your phone is, but with Nougat an Emergency Information feature was introduced. You'll find it under Users in the settings screen.



If you open it, you'll see two tabs: Info and Contacts.

Under Info you can add information about yourself, such as mediaction, allergies, and of course your name and under Contacts you can add contacts which can then be called without unlocking your phone. However, accessing it is a little involved; you need to bring up the emergency call screen, then hit Emergency information twice.





The screenshots were taken on a Samsung Galaxy S3 running LineageOS 14.1 Nightly as of 13 February 2017. Currently I have no contacts on that phone, so I can't add any to show you, and my primary phone is still on Marshmallow, which doesn't have that option.