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Driven to Safety
Chief Steven Westermann, Chet Huber, Ed Peper, John Walsh and Chief David Hiller
By Chet Huber
President, OnStar
This week, OnStar announced a new technology – Stolen Vehicle Slowdown – which has the capability to slow down stolen Model Year 2009 GM vehicles at the request of the vehicle’s owner and with the help of law enforcement. As a 35-year GM employee, I am so proud to be able to work for a company that truly cares about the safety and well-being of not only their drivers, but all drivers on the road.
We cannot ignore the numbers when it comes to safety. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are more than 30,000 police pursuits each year. It is estimated that 12,000 of the chases end in property damage, 7,500 in personal injuries and 300 in fatalities. NHTSA has praised technologies like OnStar’s Stolen Vehicle Slowdown for having the potential to help make our roads better, our passengers more protected and our drivers safer.
OnStar currently responds to 700-800 Stolen Vehicle Location Assistance requests each month. We believe Stolen Vehicle Slowdown is an important next step toward helping to reduce police chases involving stolen vehicles, which is why we are working with several public safety organizations including the Fraternal Order of the Police, International Association of Fire Chiefs, National Emergency Number Association (NENA), and the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) to ensure that the proper processes are in place to use the technology effectively.
Here’s how OnStar’s Stolen Vehicle Slowdown technology works:
- Once the OnStar subscriber reports their vehicle stolen to law enforcement, they can call OnStar and request Stolen Vehicle Location Assistance. OnStar will confirm the subscriber has not opted out of the Stolen Vehicle Slowdown service.
- OnStar will use real-time GPS technology to attempt to pinpoint the exact location of the stolen vehicle and provide this information to law enforcement to help them recover the vehicle.
- When law enforcement has established a clear line of sight of the stolen vehicle and confirms that it is safe to slow the vehicle down, law enforcement may request OnStar to slow it down remotely.
- Safeguards will be in place to ensure that the correct vehicle is slowed down.
- OnStar then sends a remote signal to the vehicle that interacts with the Powertrain system to reduce engine power which will slow the vehicle down gradually.
OnStar Stolen Vehicle Slowdown is not intended to, in any way, infringe on our subscriber’s privacy. After 11 years and 80 million customer interactions to date, we have demonstrated that we take our subscribers’ privacy seriously. We believe that Stolen Vehicle Slowdown will have great societal benefit, but we do understand that due to privacy concerns, some drivers will not want this service on their vehicle. OnStar will have an opt-out option where subscribers can simply press their blue OnStar button and ask to have the service disabled from their vehicle. The rest of the OnStar services will not be affected. If they want the Stolen Vehicle Slowdown service re-enabled, they can visit their local GM dealership so that a re-enablement procedure can be performed. Through our market research, though, 95 percent of OnStar’s subscribers have told us that they would like this technology on their vehicles – because they do not want their vehicles to be used as instruments of harm.
This is not a science project to us. Developing Stolen Vehicle Slowdown was a unique collaboration across the GM enterprise especially with the GM Powertrain team. This project may have started out as an idea sketched out over hundreds of post-it notes on our office walls, but I am thrilled to say that it is now a reality. GM will make this technology available on nearly 1.7 million Model Year 2009 vehicles, 60 percent of which are Chevys.
Posted by Editor on October 12, 2007 11:43 AM
Comments
Most of us see this as big brother spying on us and GM bias is not to the owner.
Example the Corvette is very low on the car list as being stolen yet Onstar is forced onto the owners as you cannot buy the car without Onstar
They clearly shows the future that GM promotes a function that opens the doors of many business ventures where Onstar provides a path of a state monitoring cars for smog, steam of revenue for traffic tickets, preventing car being driven if owner has not paid for car insurance, license plates, or even having missed one car loan payment or worse a spouse/Ex mad a you and claiming car was stolen.
It is not a secret states have been installing transponders along the road to monitor cars via wireless for other purposes other then a car has been stolen.
Because of the poor way GM has handled this I know via the internet hundreds of people ripping out the Onstar hardware or pulling the power fuse for it in their Corvettes.
Anyone could claim a car is being stolen for one reason or another but to show GM has the way and rights to send commands to the car and control that car only proves big business and states want customers to not only pay for Onstar within the cost of the car itself but then use it to control or spy on their own car.
Just because the owner does not pay for some Onstar service does not mean Onstar is non functional for other purposes.
This also opens the door of anyone hacking into Onstar can cause as much damage as the claim of this service preventing cars being stolen.
The fact this is being marketed as used by police and the constant reporting of states using ticketing as a high revenue stream clearly shows what the intent of this wireless Onstar really can be about.
I myself will no longer buy any GM car as I have for 40 years with the notion if and when I and my car is being spied on and remotely controlled for reasons of profits of that use.
Posted by: JR on October 12, 2007 1:37 PM
I have 2 GM vehicles, both On Star equipped. I think this upcoming feature addition to On Star is fabulous! I can see this catching on to other brand markets. It's good to see GM pioneered it!
Posted by: Jason Moriset on October 12, 2007 4:13 PM
I would definitely consider extending my on-star subscription with this new technology. Along with stolen vehicle location assist I fully expect any thieves to not consider any GM vehicle as they don't know which GM vehicle is equipped or not with this service.
Keep up the good work and I expect that 60% that don't renew or keep their on-star service to reconsider when this kind of technology is available and most importantly, demonstrated in the real world.
As more people hear about on-star's benefits the more people will renew.
But I think GM is just scratching the surface of what other things it can accomplish with other possible technologies and services that may be derived through on-star technology.
Posted by: Edwar Hayes on October 12, 2007 5:10 PM
A Big-Brother feature is nice,
but it would be comforting to know that On Star would help a regestered owner to evade Police if he or she claimed to be wrongfully persued. The customer is the one who pay's for the service and the service should serve him or her, in preferance to a municipality, state or federal police department that may or may not even subscribe to On Star or may or may not own and operate GM vehicals, It's a matter of time before an inocent is detained by this system and sues: onstar and GM. Its a civil liberies issue. The Bush administration and currant terrorism isues will eventualy blow over, GM do'snt want to be on the BIG_BROTHER side of this issue when it does. Just in case all of america's libertarians and liberals do'nt allready buy competetors cars, this will be the final nail in the coffin, and those aformentioned are quite vocal and could take even more middle americans with them.
I beseich you, rethink this and do'nt be on this side of the issue.
Posted by: Jason Zebersky on October 15, 2007 12:39 AM
Well GM you are loosing a customer that has purchased 10 pick-up trucks, 1 Burban, 1 Bravada, 1 Trailblazer, 2 ZR2 Blazers, 1 SS Imp. (old style) and 3 Corvettes in the last 15 years from Covert Chevrolet in Bastrop, Texas. Please feel free to contact Rox Covert for confirmation.
My last 5 purchases have been Mercedes(2), Mustangs(2) and a 07 2500 WT since OnStar is stuffed in every high end pick-up. While we would like to buy a new Burban or the Cadillac version to replace our 98, having OnStar automatically installed will send us to Ford yet again.
There was a time when we never considered another brand but you have lost us by shoving this "feature" on us.
I hope some one at GM reads this and passes it to manager that actually cares about customers.
Posted by: Rex Schumacher on October 16, 2007 10:36 PM
JR,
Corvette is available without OnStar. I bought one in March 07.
Posted by: rc on October 18, 2007 5:27 PM
