RE: Do people want a hard copy of the owners' manual for their car?

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

On-Star reports a limited set of events (air-bag deployment being a biggie) to the monitoring facility, which then passes along the info to first responders and stays online (like a 911 operator would do) to reassure and to acquire any additional info if you are in a condition to supply it. I don't know if all the On-Star'd vehicles have GPS or if they use the network to triangulate vehicle position.

You can also stand outside your locked vehicle, call the On-Star number, identify yourself, and have them remotely unlock your doors for you, if you've left the keys in the car. No doubt they could also remote-start, and therefore probably remote-kill (er.... the engine...).

What I was talking about was an in-vehicle watcher that looked for odd or confused sequences of button pressing and lever-pushing and jumped in, a-la Clippy with "from the confused fumbling that you are currently doing, and because you weigh enough to trip the adult-human sensor in the driver seat (so you aren't a small child or the family dog), I think that you are trying random controls in hopes of stumbling upon a needed function" or somewhat more diplomatic words than that, followed by a vocal or onscreen diagnostic tree.

 - Kevin

________________________________
From: voxwoman [mailto:voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com]
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 7:19 AM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin
Cc: Pamela Nelson; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Do people want a hard copy of the owners' manual for their car?

I think that's what On-Star is supposed to do. At least that's what their recent advertising implies:  'Hello, I see that you were in an accident. We are notifying the authorities"


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