OnStar Logs 100,000th Crash Response, Commemorates Lives Saved
By Jocelyn K. Allen
Director of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, OnStar
As we gear up for America’s busiest travel week of the year, OnStar will be making a significant safety announcement tomorrow: the 100,000th automatic crash response. OnStar President Chet Huber will be hosting an online press conference about the announcement, and will be joined by families whose lives have been saved by OnStar’s automatic crash response, as well as by first responders and medical professionals who have been on the scene of these crashes.
Please visit onstar.com Tuesday, Nov. 18, after 6 p.m. Eastern to hear the press conference.
- Posted in Business
motorman
i have onstar on my new 2008 corvette and signed up for extra minutes on the phone side of onstar. i was disappointed to find out that most areas where there is no cell phone service there is no onstar phone service. i was under the impression that the phone service worked the same as the onstar operator service thru satellite but it is just verizon tower service..
Edward Hayes
Here’s some good news from GM you won’t hear about. But believe me there are still a few of us still trying to get the good word out about GM, its progress, its quality improvements, cost cutting and labor achievements, and technological advancements. And there is still one, perhaps just one who is trying to save GM’s brands. So I hope everyone will stop and read my entry in the last post by Edward Hayes dated Nov. 17, 2008.
A post about how GM can save its brands like Buick by putting its headquarters in China. Do the same with Saturn and put it together with Opel in Europe. Perhaps, put Pontiac in Australia with Holden, where more of its cars will be derived. Look, every ill informed professed car expert and their brother suggests that GM should kill its brands. Now Washington is joining in the nonsense. While Japan has 15 brands (YES 15 BRANDS) in the US that are guarenteed never to go out of business or see more than 50% foreign or domestic ownership. They will be here forever, profit or not waiting to eat the carcass of well… you know.
Look, the bottom line is America’s brands need a “Brick House” the kind of brick house a new headquarters in a foreign country would provide. So if Buick’s headquarters are in China, then Senator know nothing can’t suggest killing Buick along with 10 other US brands to make Japan happy with it’s not for profit government guarenteed brands.
Look we know America’s hope of energy independence rides on the shoulders of our automobile industry. But those in Congress can’t put 2 and 2 together. The automobile industry will always be a cyclical industry, even Toyota lost money in the US last quarter. Yet our roads and bridges which cost trillions will continue to cost trillions to maintain. If our automakers fail, those trillions of dollars will be an indirect susidy to foreign automakers. So maintaining a viable transportation system including the industry itself has to be a long term, not quarterly or cyclical consideration.
If GM is allowed to fail, our investment in our roads and energy independence over the next decade might as well go directly to Japan and Toyota.
That would be the ultimate irony wouldn’t it?
When all is said and done we subsidized the automobile industry to get our energy independence just to ultimately be dependent on Japan, China, and Germany for all our green transportation needs.
Just goes to show you the incompetence of our government over the last number of years.
It’s time for new leadership! Can’t wait! Hope GM can wait!
Thomas
More and more I am realizing that Onstar is just a cell phone with 911 location capability. The only difference is that it is linked to the airbag sensors to place a call automatically.
The unlock function may be valuable, but if someone steals it, all they have to do is unplug it. Didn’t anyone think of that? The battery in my truck is in the front corner, so in a frontal collision, it would be the first thing to go, thus inactivating Onstar.
Vehicle diagnostics is esentially only telling you something when your check engine light is on. I have Onstar, but I think a lot of times the price and the hype are embellished greatly.
Steven
I find On Star to be an over hyped waste of technology. Why? Because many of the most usable real features don’t come with every car. For instance according to the OnStar web page and the On Star user’s manual and my car’s owner’s manual , my new 2008 GM car does not come with unlock (although the owner’s manual and the OnStar web site contract each other on this point) or diagnostics. Instead, I get nagging phone calls, emails, and letters about “push the blue button” The only time I pushed the blue button, I got an ignorant operator who wanted my email address for the diagnostics report, even though I tried to tell her multiple times she does not need my email address because diagnostics report was not available on my car, wanted my phone home number and could not tell me why, but insisted I would not get any phone calls ( which I have), wanted me to pick a PIN to unlock my car doors even though I told her my owner’s manual clearly states that my car did not have that feature, and then wanted my CC number! And next year I can keep all this for just $199 per year!?!?!?
I love my new GM car (the 8th GM car the wife and I have owned) , but as far as I’m concerned On Stat is just one more thing to go wrong. I was happy my wife’s GM car did not come with On Star in 2004. Espesically when it became standard on the 2005 model. Besides, I’m willing to bet that some of those crashes are people yakking on the “hands free” phone, which is still a distraction for the driver, Get off the phone and drive or pull off the road to talk.