I'm sure it's not too hard to disconnect OnStar. I know I'll be doing it myself once the free trial is up.

 

gotta love the Patriot Act...

 

WOW! I've never heard of that before! Can that be done with any vehicle that is OnStar equipped? My Dad's Suburban and Corvette both came with OnStar, but he didn't renew his subscription. I know he recently got a new phone, but I'm not sure if it has BlueTooth or not

 

New laws get written every day.

Dont't forget, when you buy a car you are paying for a product. A product with expensive emmisions control devices that were placed there without your consent. you're also carrying a lot of weight to protect you from extremely unlikley accident scenarios. Starting soon (if not already) even stability control will be MANDATORY in all new cars.

In case you're missing my point, there is absolutely nothing from stopping the government from passing a law mandating features that some consumers might find undesirable. Over time, consumers will accept these features as normal.

btw, if the government has an ownership stake in GM, they will have the leverage to force GM to license onstar to every car sold in the US. They could even sell that as a good thing to america since it would be pure gravy profit for GM right? That's the carrot. Then the stick, the feds will run the onstar moniitoring center and 1984 follows...

 

Let's get down to the bottom line here on why OnStar is mandatory on every vehicle:

GM can't sell OnStar subscriptions to vehicles that don't have OnStar installed.

This goes not only for the initial owner, but every owner afterwards that buys the car as a used vehicle.

IMO, It is smart for GM to put these in every vehicle.

For every person they alienate from buying a new vehicle (which I am guessing is very small), they are probably picking up many subscribers for OnStar which is likely a very lucrative service-based product.

 

Wrong. The car did it.

The car's sensors detected sudden motion which matched what the car is programmed to recognize as an accident, and it notified OnStar.

Nobody (and no computer system) outside of your car is actively monitoring your car.

 

And the onstar operator notified law enforcement without the driver's consent. Thus his statement was true with the following clarifications added:

Onstar (as the the service provider) took it upon themselves to report the activity (to law enforcement)

 

I wouldn't go as far as to not purchase a vehicle because of OnStar. This means that you don't like the vehicle enough if you can walk away from it. If I were to purchase a Camaro, it having OnStar would have little power.

OnStar would simply become disconnected/damaged/disabled on any car I'd have.

I still feel it should be optional. Even include a $100 OnStar delete fee, or something like it, as long as the device is physically removed from the vehicle.

 

Wrong. The OnStar device IN the car did it

This is a perfect example of IMperfect technology. The car reported an accident when there was none. That's the bottom line.

 

With the way OnStar works, the device sensed an accident in which airbags were not deployed. The OnStar opperator DID NOT contact the police, they contacted the occupents of the car. "Hello, this is OnStar, we detected an accident blah blah blah. Is everyone okay?" The problem in the story is now we are on someones word as far as the events that happened from their. I bet the kids doing donuts, OnStar pops on, and he panicked and didnt say a word...tried to push buttons to get it to go away...etc. Maybe best case scenerio, OnStar asked for the information to verify he is the owner, like they do when they unlock your car, and he didnt have it.
Teenager, in mom or dads new Truck..doing donuts on the field. He probably had a big laugh and told the OnStar employee to go "Blow something".

Sensing foul play..as in stolen automobile, the OnStar employee would indeed notify the police of vehicle and location. The police pieced the crime together from their.

I dont think OnStar sensors go off, notifying OnStar, and the employee just goes..HEY theirs an accident. Lets send the police, ambulance, and fire department!

 

Or even more likely is that the story never happened at all.

 

That's like when my little brother used to say, "I'm not touching you, my finger is."

 

To which you should have responded "I'm not punching you, my fist is."

 

If the features that get demeaned necessary are so bad, the people in office won't be there too much longer. There are ways to stop this from happening.

Even if the gov't does for GM to put Onstar in every vehicle, Onstar won't monitor vehicles without subscriptions. It would be too costly. If they were monitoring vehicles, and didn't report accidents, there would be a huge amount of lawsuits.

Also, since "forcing" GM to put Onstar in vehicles doesn't effect other manufactures. If so, there would be several lawsuits about monopolies from all of the other manufactures AND the companies that want to offer these services. Even if they wanted them to have an Onstar like service, it wouldn't have to be Onstar (like BMW's service) and the gov't would be running it. That is the only way something like this could even be considered. It is doubtful you could force people to keep the subscription going.

Also, take off the tin foil hat.

So if the driver isn't able to respond... don't send help?

Under the same scenario, except the car is stolen and that is why the driver doesn't respond to OnStar, should they not notify the police? For them, it is error on the side of safety, and I see no errors in what they did.

 

Huh? Apples and oranges my friend. Laws required to operate a vehicle safely are a completely different situation. OnStar is a service much like a cell phone, cable TV, newspaper subscription. While laws still exist governing such services, to provide personal information to law enforcement would typically require a court order, much like how the government persecution of Napster users ended up... people were warned ahead of time they were being monitored. About the only way law enforcement could force OnStar to give them your information without notifying you first would be if they could convince OnStar that you're a suspected terrorist and access it through the Patriot Act.

Government can create new laws, however don't forget that any politician who votes for an unfavorable law is going to have to run for re-election at some point. Unpopular laws usually don't last long if there's no real impact to public safety.

That is absolute B.S! The government ownership is conditional on GM returning to profitability. If they were to try to force this they could only do it for GM and eventually people would stop buying GM products. You need to take off the tin foil hat and quit staring at the sun.